“I shall not argue,” said the young man, with a smile which he endeavoured to make easy and natural.  “The time for argument is over.  You played trumps.”

Vetch laughed.  “And it wasn’t my last card,” he answered bluntly.

“The game isn’t finished.”  Though Stephen’s voice was light it held a quiver of irritation.  “He laughs best who laughs last.”  The other had started the row, and, by Jove, he would give him as much as he wanted!  He recalled suddenly the charges that there was more than the customary political log-rolling—­that there were mysterious “discreditable dealings” in the Governor’s election to office.

But it appeared in a minute that Gideon Vetch was adequate to any demand which the occasion might develop.  Already Stephen was beginning to regard him less as a man than as an energetic idea, as activity incarnate.

“If you mean to imply that the laugh may be on me at the last,” he returned, while the points of blue light seemed to pierce Stephen like arrows—­no, like gimlets, “well, you’re wrong about one part of it—­for if that ever happens, I’ll laugh with you because of the sheer rotten irony.”

For the first time the other noticed how the Governor was dressed—­in a suit of some heavy brown stuff which looked as if it had been sprinkled and needed pressing.  He wore a green tie and a striped shirt of the conspicuous kind that Stephen hated.  Though the younger man was keenly critical of clothes, and perseveringly informed himself regarding the smallest details of fashion, he acknowledged now that he had at last met a man who appeared to wear his errors of dress as naturally as he wore his errors of opinion.  The fuzzy brown stuff, the green tie with red spots, the striped shirt—­was it blue or purple?—­all became as much a part of Gideon Vetch as the storm-ruffled plumage was part of an eagle.  If the misguided man had attired himself in a toga, he would have carried the Mantle without dignity perhaps, but certainly with picturesqueness.

“I’ll hold you to your promise—­or threat,” said Stephen lightly, as he turned from the Governor to his daughter.  Why, in thunder, he asked himself, had he stayed so long?  What was there about the fellow that held one in spite of oneself?  “I hope you will be all right again in a few days,” he said formally as his eyes met Patty’s upraised glance.  In the warm room all the glamour of the twilight—­and of that hidden country within his mind—­had faded from her.  She looked fresh and blooming and merely commonplace, he thought.  A brief half hour ago he had felt that he was in danger of losing his head; now his rational part was in the ascendant, and his future appeared pleasantly tranquil.  Then the girl smiled that faint inscrutable smile of hers, and the disturbing green rays shot from her eyes.  A thrill of interest stirred his pulses while something held him there against his will and his better judgment, as if he were caught fast in the steel spring of a trap.