The woman had turned with furtive haste in the direction of the outer gate; and when Stephen started on again toward the library, he crossed a man who was rapidly ascending the brick walk from the fountain at the foot of the hill.  By his jaunty stride and his air of excessive joviality—­the mark of the successful local politician—­Stephen recognized Julius Gershom, the campaign-maker, as people called him, who had stood behind Gideon Vetch from the beginning of his career.  “What an unconscionable bounder the fellow is,” thought Stephen as he passed him.  What an abundance of self-assertiveness he had contrived to express in his thin spruce figure, his tightly curling black hair, which grew too low on his forehead, and his short black moustache with pointed ends which curved up like polished metal from his full red lips.

“I suppose he is on his way to the Governor,” mused the young man idly.  “How on earth does Vetch stand him?”

But to his surprise, when he glanced back again, he saw that Gershom had passed the mansion, and was hurrying down the walk which the strange woman had followed a moment before.  Stephen could still see her figure approaching a distant gate; and he observed presently that Gershom was not far behind her, and that he appeared to be speaking her name.  She started and turned quickly with a movement of alarm; and then, as Gershom joined her, she went on again in the direction she had first taken.  A few minutes later their rapidly moving figures left the Square and passed down the street beyond the high iron fence.

“I wonder what it means?” thought Stephen indifferently.  “I wonder what the deuce Gershom has got up his sleeve?”

By the time he reached his office the wonder had vanished; but it returned to him on his way home that afternoon when he dropped into the old print shop for a word with Corinna.

“I passed that fellow Gershom in the Square to-day,” he said.  “Do you know him by sight?”

She shook her head.  “What is he like?  Patty tells me that he has become a nuisance.”

“Ah, then you have seen Patty?”

A smile turned her eyes to the colour of November leaves.  “She was here for an hour this morning.  I have great hopes of her.  I think she is going to supply me with an interest in life.”

“Then she still amuses you?”

“Amuses me?  My dear, she enchants me.  She stands for the suppressed audacities of my past.”

He looked at her thoughtfully.  “I wonder how much of her is real?”

“Probably half.  She is real, I think, in her courage, but not in her conventions.”

“Well, I confess that she puzzles me.  I can’t see just what she means.”

“I doubt if she means anything.  She is a vital spirit; she chafes at chains; and she is smarting from a sense of inferiority.  There is a thirst for power in her little body that may make her either an actress or a politician.”