Blount had met Gordon socially a number of times, and in the intervals allowed him by Mrs. Weatherford he was silently studying the face of the big man who, singularly enough, as the student thought, was thus identifying himself publicly as a friend of the boss.  True, Blount did not forget his father’s warm commendation of Gordon in that earliest political talk on the Quaretaro Canyon road, but that was before the lines had been drawn and the gage of battle thrown down by the allied forces of the machine and the railroad.  Now, with the battle drawing to its close, Blount thought that nothing could be more certain than the fact that his father and his father’s organization were joining hands with the railroad oligarchy to slaughter Gordon at the polls.

Putting aside the wonder that Gordon should be accepting Mrs. Honoria’s hospitality, Blount fell to contrasting the strong, large-featured face of the Mission Hills ranchman with that of Reynolds, the opposition candidate.  Though he was himself on the corporation campaigning staff, Blount could not help admitting that the comparison was not favorable to Reynolds.  His first impression of the round-faced, portly gentleman who was standing firmly upon what he was pleased to call a platform of law and order—­a man who was Gordon’s opposite in every feature and characteristic—­had been unfavorable.  He had been saying to himself, since, that Reynolds’s face, in spite of its heavy jaw and prominent eyes, was the face of a time-server.

Another point of difference between the two men counted for much.  Reynolds wanted the office, and was spending money liberally to get it, while Gordon had accepted the nomination reluctantly.  Throughout the hot campaign he had refused to stump the State for himself or his party, and was said to be holding steadfastly aloof in the bargaining and dickering.  Weighing the two men one against the other—­Reynolds was sitting in an adjacent box with Kittredge and Bentley and two other railroad officials—­Blount admitted a twinge of regret that chance, or his convictions, had made him a partisan of the weaker.

Having been lost in the shuffle, as he expressed it, Blount made the most of these reflective excursions during the period of the box-party captivity.  From the rising of the curtain to the going down thereof the Weatherfords, mother and daughter, kept him from exchanging so much as a word with Patricia, whom Gantry was shamelessly monopolizing.  But on the short return walk to the hotel, Blount asserted his rights and gave Patricia his arm.

“I think you owe me an abject apology,” was the way she began on him, when they had gained such privacy as the crowded sidewalk conferred.

“Consider it made, and then tell me what for,” he rejoined, striving, man-fashion, to catch step with her mood.

“For making us leave that dear, delightful, out-of-date, and out-of-place Georgian mansion in the hills and come to town when we want to get a sight of your face.”