if I hadn't put the
old man where he is?"

At this she turned on him furiously, her eyes blazing through their
greenish mist. "I don't owe you anything, and you know it!" she retorted
defiantly. Then before he could detain her she broke away from him and
ran up the stairs. How dared he pretend that he had placed her under an
obligation! As if it made any difference to her whether her father were
Governor or not!

As she fled upward she heard Gershom follow Vetch into the library, and
she knew that they would sit talking there until long after midnight.
These discussions had become frequent of late; and she surmised vaguely,
though Vetch never mentioned Gershom's name to her, that the two men
were no longer upon the friendly terms of the old days. Ever since
Vetch's election, it had seemed to her that the pack of hungry
politicians had closed in about him; and only the day before, when she
had gone over to the Governor's office in the Capitol building, she had
run away from what she merrily described as "the famished wolves"
waiting outside his door. It was clear even to her that the political
leaders who had supported Vetch were beginning already to distrust him.
They had sought, she realized, to use his popularity, his eloquence, his
earnestness, for their own ends; and they were making the historic
discovery that the man who possesses these affirmative qualities is
seldom without the will to preserve them. In their superficial ploughing
of the soil, Vetch's adherents had at last struck against the rock of
resistance. A man of ambition, or a man of prejudice, they might have
controlled; but, as Patty had learned long ago, Vetch was that most
difficult of political problems--the man of an idea.

Sitting before her dressing-table she glanced over the room, which was
hung with the gaily decorated chintz she had bought after months of
secret longing for roses and hollyhocks in her bedroom. Now she felt
that it looked cheap and flimsy because she had sacrificed material to
colour. She wanted something different to-night; she wanted something
better. Turning to the mirror she gazed back at her vivid face, with the
large deep eyes, so full of poignant expectancy, and the soft dimpled
chin. From her expression she might have been dreaming of happiness; but
the thought in her mind was simply, "The powder I use is too white.
Those women to-night used powder that did not show. I must get some
to-morrow." She was pretty,--even