She turned away from him, smoothing her hair in the mirror above the mantelpiece. "You're sure of that?" she asked after a moment. "Of George Fleetwood? And poor Grace thinks you are deep in my counsels! I am as sure of re-appointing Fleetwood as I am that I have just been re-elected myself. I've never made any secret of the fact that if they wanted me back they must have him, too." "You are tremendously generous!" she murmured. "Generous? What a strange word to use! Fleetwood is my trump card--the one man I can count on to carry out my ideas through thick and thin." She mused on this, smiling a little. "That's why I call you generous--when I remember how you disliked him two years ago!" "What of that? I was prejudiced against him, I own; or rather, I had a just distrust of a man with such a past. But how splendidly he's wiped it out! What a record he has written on the new leaf he promised to turn over if I gave him the chance! Do you know," the Governor interrupted himself with a pleasantly reminiscent laugh, "I was rather annoyed with Grace when she hinted that you had promised to back up Ashford--I told her you didn't aspire to distribute patronage. But she might have reminded me--if she'd known--that it _was_ you who persuaded me to give Fleetwood that chance." Mrs. Mornway turned with a slight heightening of color. "Grace--how could she possibly have known?" "She couldn't, of course, unless she'd read my weakness in my face. But why do you look so startled at my little joke?" "It's only that I so dislike Grace's ineradicable idea that I am a wire-puller. Why should she imagine I would help her about Ashford?" "Oh, Grace has always been a mild and ineffectual conspirator, and she thinks every other woman is built on the same plan. But you _did_ get Fleetwood's job for him, you know," he repeated with laughing insistence. "I had more faith than you in human nature, that's all." She paused a moment, and then added: "Personally, you know, I have always rather disliked him." "Oh, I never doubted your disinterestedness. But you are not going to turn against your candidate, are you?" She hesitated. "I am not sure; circumstances alter cases. When you made Fleetwood Attorney-General two years ago he was the inevitable man for the place." "Well--is there a better one now?" "I don't say there is--it's not my business to look for him, at any rate. What I mean is that at that time Fleetwood was worth risking anything for--now I don't know that he is." "But, even if he were not, what do I risk for him now? I don't see your point. Since he didn't cost me my re-election, what can he possibly cost me now I'm in?" "He's immensely unpopular. He will cost you a great deal of popularity, and you have never pretended to despise that." "No, nor ever sacrificed anything essential to it. Are you really asking me to offer up Fleetwood to it now?"