“Of course I care for him,” she cried, her eyes flashing at the thought.  “I love him better than anybody in the world.  Certainly no one ever had better reason to care for a person.  My father failed when he came to Coniston—­he was not meant for business, and Uncle Jethro took care of him all his life, and paid his debts.  And he has taken care of me and given me everything that a girl could wish.  Very few people know what a fine character Uncle Jethro has,” continued Cynthia, carried away as she was by the pent-up flood of feeling within her.  “I know what he has done for others, and I should love him for that even if he never had done anything for me.”

Bob was silent.  He was, in the first place, utterly amazed at this outburst, revealing as it did a depth of passionate feeling in the girl which he had never suspected, and which thrilled him.  It was unlike her, for she was usually so self-repressed; and, being unlike her, accentuated both sides of her character the more.

But what was he to say of the defence of Jethro Bass?  Bob was not a young man who had pondered much over the problems of life, because these problems had hitherto never touched him.  But now he began to perceive, dimly, things that might become the elements of a tragedy, even as Mr. Merrill had perceived them some months before.  Could a union endure between so delicate a creature as the girl before him and Jethro Bass?  Could Cynthia ever go back to him again, and live with him happily, without seeing many things which before were hidden by reason of her youth and innocence?

Bob had not been nearly four years at college without learning something of the world; and it had not needed the lecture from his father, which he got upon leaving Washington, to inform him of Jethro’s political practices.  He had argued soundly with his father on that occasion, having the courage to ask Mr. Worthington in effect whether he did not sanction his underlings to use the same tools as Jethro used.  Mr. Worthington was righteously angry, and declared that Jethro had inaugurated those practices in the state, and had to be fought with his own weapons.  But Mr. Worthington had had the sense at that time not to mention Cynthia’s name.  He hoped and believed that that affair was not serious, and merely a boyish fancy—­as indeed it was.

It remains to be said, however, that the lecture had not been without its effect upon Bob.  Jethro Bass, after all, was—­Jethro Bass.  All his life Bob had heard him familiarly and jokingly spoken of as the boss of the state, and had listened to the tales, current in all the country towns, of how Jethro had outwitted this man or that.  Some of them were not refined tales.  Jethro Bass as the boss of the state—­with the tolerance with which the public in general regard politics—­was one thing.  Bob was willing to call him “Uncle Jethro,” admire his great strength and shrewdness, and declare that the men he had outwitted had richly deserved it.  But Jethro Bass as the ward of Cynthia Wetherell was quite another thing.