Miss Anners was tapping one daintily shod foot on the tiled hearth.

“You made your greatest mistake in the very beginning, Evan,” she said decisively.  “You should have made a confidant of your father.”

“I did try to,” he protested.  “Everything was all right until this political business came up between us.  But that opened the rift.  I couldn’t do as he wanted me to, and my sympathies were with the corporations which I thought he was fighting unjustly.  So when Mr. McVickar made me an offer, I accepted in good faith, believing that I could really do something toward bringing about a better understanding.”

“And now you believe you can’t?—­that it is impossible?”

“Not wholly impossible, I suppose.  But the ‘great game’ seems to be everything in this benighted commonwealth, and everybody plays it—­my father, his wife, the railroad officials, and the politicians.  Surely you wouldn’t say that I should have let father put me on the State ticket as a candidate, knowing—­as I could not help knowing—­that I would be expected to carry out the designs of the machine regardless of right and wrong?”

“Certainly not,” was the quick reply, “not if you were convinced that the motive—­your father’s motive—­was unworthy.  But if you have been telling me the truth, and all the truth, I should say that you didn’t stop to inquire what his motive was.”

“What was the use of inquiring?” he demanded moodily.  “He is the boss, and he would have used the machine to put me into office as attorney-general.  In other words, I should have owed my election, not to the will and selection of the people, but to the will of one man, and that man my nearest kinsman; a man who is, beyond all question of doubt, working hand in glove with all the trickery and double-dealing practised by the corporations.  Under such conditions, would it have been possible for me to accept and to administer the office without fear or favor?”

“I don’t know why not,” she returned.  “Notwithstanding your charge—­which merely shows how angry you are—­your ‘nearest kinsman,’ as you call him, would have been the last man in the world to interfere.  Wasn’t that the very reason he gave you for wanting to put you on the ticket?”

“I know,” said Blount, whose mind was beginning to cloud again.  “But there are so many other mysteries.  We’ll say that my father honestly wanted me to stand for the candidacy.  But right in the midst of things he conspires with Mr. McVickar to put me into my present unspeakable dilemma.”

Her smile was gently reproachful.

“It is my poor opinion, Evan, that you don’t half appreciate your father.  Worse than that, you don’t know him.  But that is beside the present mark.  What are you going to do?”

“I have already done it.  I have wired my resignation to Mr. McVickar, and he will doubtless accept it.”

She was looking him fairly in the eyes.  “That is the second unwise thing you have done,” she remarked.  And then:  “Evan, there are times when you are sadly in need of a balance-wheel.  Don’t you know that?”