“And has thereby freed you from all obligations of loyalty?  Don’t deceive yourself:  women are not made that way.  Doubtless she will go on and marry the other man in due season; but she will never forgive you if you smash her ideals.  But we were talking about the things you ought to have guessed.  Fetch me the atlas from the book-case—­lower shelf; right-hand corner; that’s it.”

He did it; and in further obedience opened the thin quarto at the map of the United States.  There were heavy black lines, inked in with a pen, tracing out the various ramifications of a great railway system.  The nucleus of the system lay in the middle West, but there was a growing network of the black lines reaching out toward the Pacific.  And connecting the trans-Mississippi network with the western was a broad red line paralleling the Trans-Western Railway.

She smiled at his sudden start of comprehension.

“Do you begin to suspect things?” she asked.

He nodded his head.

“You ought to be a man.  If you were, I should never give you a moment’s peace until you consented to take a partnership with me.  It’s as plain as day, now.”

“Is it?  Then I wish you would make it appear so to me.  I am not half as subtile as you give me credit for being.”

“Yet you worked this out.”

“That was easy enough; after I had seen Mrs. Brentwood’s letter, and yours from Mr. Hunnicott.  The Plantagould people want your railroad, and the receivership is a part of a plan for acquiring it.  But why is Major Guilford spending so much money for improvements?”

“His reasons are not far to seek now that you have shown me where to look.  His instructions are to run the stock down so that the Plantagould can buy it in.  Cut rates and big expenditures will do that—­have done it.  On the other hand, it is doubtless a condition of the deal that the road shall be turned over whole as to its property values—­there is to be no wrecking in the general acceptance of the word.  The Plantagould doesn’t want a picked skeleton.”

Miss Portia’s eyes narrowed.

“It’s a skilful bit of engineering, isn’t it?” she said.  “You’d admire it as artistic work yourself if your point of view were not so hopelessly personal.”

“You don’t know half the artistic skill of it yet,” he went on.  “Besides all these different ends that are being conserved, the gang is taking care of its surplus heelers on the pay-rolls of the company.  More than that, it is making immense political capital for itself.  Everybody knows what the policy of the road was under the old regime:  ’All the tariff the traffic will stand.’  But now a Bucks man has hold of it, and liberality is the word.  Every man in Trans-Western territory is swearing by Bucks and Guilford.  Ah, my dear friend, his Excellency the governor is a truly great man!”

She nodded.

“I’ve been trying to impress you with that fact all along.  The mistake you made was in not joining the People’s Party early in the campaign, David.”