advanced.  This was what mystified him.  He recognized that what she had told him, when they first talked the matter over, was the natural expression of the woman’s self which he knew so well; her later attitude showed the influence of some factor in her life unknown to him.  She had repeatedly been on the point of confiding to him, yet the confidence had never been given, and Gorham was not a man who could urge beyond what it was her voluntary desire to speak.

It never had occurred to him to take offence or to criticise Eleanor’s attitude.  He wished that she would come to him with the burden which lay so heavily upon her heart, but he wished it only because he felt that he could lighten it.  Ever since the cloud had become apparent, his tenderness toward her had increased to such an extent that she felt herself weakened by his sympathy and swept along relentlessly by the flood of events which crowded one on top of another.  He had told her that there should be no trial, and she showed him by every word and act that she depended blindly upon his ability to make good his promise.

The calm which existed at the offices of the Consolidated Companies during the fortnight succeeding the stormy session of the committee, while unexpected, did not lull Gorham into any false sense of security.  Now that his vision had been cleared, he knew that it was their strength pitted against his own.  He had his own plans for meeting this, but with supreme confidence in himself he preferred to let them make the first move.  Covington had not retreated from his position that a compromise of some sort was desirable, but he succeeded in convincing Gorham that this was simply a difference in viewpoint, and that his chief’s judgment would, of course, be final.  Acting upon the definite authority which Gorham had forced from the committee to replace the tacit understanding which had existed from the first, he plunged ahead with renewed energy to perfect the organizations which the Companies had in hand.  But while conscious that his associates were undoubtedly concentrating their energies upon some plan which might be used effectively against him, he was grateful for the postponement of the issue, in that it gave him time to work upon his present domestic problem.

Covington congratulated himself upon the happy solution of the most dangerous horn of his dilemma.  He did not wish Gorham to yield, and he found that the more he urged him to compromise, the more firmly set he was against doing it.  Thus he could accomplish his purpose, and at the same time put himself on record without risk of being called disloyal, while advising him for his own best good.  The others were working hard, and Covington could have posted his chief upon many interesting points had he chosen to do so.  Instead, he preferred to bring added pressure upon Alice to name an early date for their wedding.  He seemed to have overlooked the fact that as yet she had not given him her formal consent, but as the event was apparently accepted by her father and Eleanor and Covington himself as a foregone conclusion, the girl took no definite exceptions to his attitude.  He was, of course, aware of the family complications, and, in expressing his sympathy, explained that he could be of much greater assistance in helping to straighten matters out if he were actually included in the family circle.