endure her, but began with pity, finding it often a very short step to the wish, at least, to embrace her.  The Governor after fifteen minutes’ acquaintance had arrived at pitying her, intensely and with his whole soul, as he did most things.  He held another interview with himself.  “Lord! what an innocent face it is!” he said.  “Mary said she would be embarrassed—­the brute that would embarrass her!  Hanged if I’ll do it!  If she would rather have me married, married I’ll be.”  He raised candid eyes to Lindsay’s face.

“I’m afraid I’ve shocked you.  You mustn’t think I shall not be glad when—­Mrs. Rudd—­is here.  But, you see, I’ve been very busy lately.  I’ve hardly had time to breathe—­haven’t had time to miss—­her—­at all, really.  All the same—­” Now what was the queer feeling in his throat and lungs—­yes, it must be the lungs—­as the Governor framed this sentence?  He went on:  “All the same, I shall be a happy man when—­my wife—­comes home.”

Lindsay’s face cleared.  This was satisfactory and proper; there was no more to be said about it.  She looked up with a smile to where the old butler beamed upon her for her youth and beauty and her accent and her name.

A handful of busy men left the Capitol in some annoyance that morning because the Governor had telephoned that he could not be there before half past eleven.  They would have been more annoyed, perhaps, if they had seen him dashing about the station light-heartedly just before the eleven-o’clock train for Bristol left.  They said to each other:  “It must be a matter of importance that keeps him.  Governor Rudd almost never throws over an appointment.  He has been working like the devil over that street-railway franchise case; probably it’s that.”

And the Governor stood by a chair in a parlor-car, his world cleared of street railways and indictments and their class as if they had never been, and in his hand was a small white oblong box tied with a tinsel cord.

“Good-by,” he said, “but remember I’m to be asked down for the garden party next week, and I’m coming.”

“I certainly won’t forget.  And I reckon I’d better not try to thank you for—­Oh, thank you!  I thought that looked like candy.  And bring Mrs. Rudd with you next week.  I want to see her.  And—­Oh, get off, please; it’s moving.  Good-by, good-by.”

And to the mighty music of a slow-clanging bell and the treble of escaping steam and the deep-rolling accompaniment of powerful wheels the Governor escaped to the platform, and the capital city of that sovereign State was empty—­practically empty.  He noticed it the moment he turned his eyes from the disappearing train and moved toward Harper and the brougham.  He also noticed that he had never noticed it before.

A solid citizen, catching a glimpse of the well-known, thoughtful face through the window of the Executive carriage as it bowled across toward the Capitol, shook his head.  “He works too hard,” he said to himself.  “A fine fellow, and young and strong, but the pace is telling.  He looks anxious to-day.  I wonder what scheme is revolving in his brain at this moment.”