“I am so sorry I am late,” he said, “but I had to go back to the office for a paper I’d forgotten.”  It was the truth as far as it went; and yet because it was not the whole truth, because his delay was due, not to his return for the paper, but to his meeting with Patty Vetch in the Square, his conscience pricked him uncomfortably.  When deceit was so easy it ceased to be a temptation.

She looked at him with an expression of guileless sympathy.  “After working all day I should think you would be tired,” she murmured.  That was the way she would always cover up his errors, large or small, he knew, with a trusting sweetness which made him feel there was dishonour in the merest tinge of dissimulation.

Mary Byrd was talking as usual in high fluting notes which drowned the gentle ripple of Margaret’s voice.

“I was just telling Margaret about the charity ball,” she said, “and the way the girls snubbed Patty Vetch in the dressing-room.”

“And it was a very good account of young barbarians at play,” commented Mr. Culpeper, who was a romantic soul and still read his Byron.

“Patty Vetch?  Why, isn’t that the daughter of the Governor?” asked Mrs. Culpeper, without a trace of her husband’s sympathy for the victim of the “snubbing.”  A moment later, in accordance with her mental attitude of evasive idealism, she added briskly:  “I try not to think of that man as Governor of Virginia.”

Of course the subject had come up.  Wherever Stephen had been in the past few weeks he had found that the conversation turned to the Governor; and it struck him, while he followed the line of girls headed by his mother’s erect figure into the dining-room, that, for good or bad, the influence of Gideon Vetch was as prevalent as an epidemic.  All through the long and elaborate meal, in which the viands that his ancestors had preferred were served ceremoniously by slow-moving coloured servants, he listened again to the familiar discussion and analysis of the demagogue, as he still called him.  How little, after all, did any one know of Gideon Vetch?  Since he had been in office what had they learned except that he was approachable in human relations and unapproachable in political ones?

“I wonder if Stephen noticed the girl at the ball?” said Mrs. Culpeper suddenly, looking tenderly at her son across the lovely George II candlesticks and the dish of expensive fruit, for she could never reconcile with her ideas of economy the spending of a penny on decorations so ephemeral as flowers.

“Oh, he couldn’t have helped it,” responded Mary Byrd.  “Every one saw her.  She was dressed very conspicuously.”

“Do you imply that you were not?” inquired her father, without facetious intention.

Mary Byrd beamed indulgently in his direction.  “Oh, you don’t know what it is to be conspicuous, dear,” she answered.  “What did you think of her dress, Stephen?”

He met her question with a blush.  Was he really so modest after the war and France and everything?—­Victoria wondered in silence.