I saw that his mind was fixed, that he would be unable to trust me until I was of his class, of the aristocracy of corpulent corporate persons. I went away much downcast; but, two weeks afterward he telegraphed for me, and when I came he at once brought up the subject of the combine. "Go ahead with it," he said. "I've been thinking it over and talking it over. We shall need only nine others besides myself and you. You represent the Ramsay interest." He equipped me with the necessary letters of introduction and sent me forth on a tour of my state. When it was ended, my "combine" was formed. And _I_ was the combine,--was master of this political blind pool. I had taken the first, the hardest step, toward the realization of my dream of real political power,--to become an unbossed boss, not the agent and servant of Plutocracy or Partizanship, but using both to further my own purposes and plans. I had thus laid out for myself the difficult feat of controlling two fiery steeds. Difficult, but not impossible, if I should develop skill as a driver--for the skilful driver has a hand so light that his horses fancy they are going their own road at their own gait. VI MISS RAMSAY REVOLTS The last remark Roebuck had made to me--on his doorstep, as I was starting on my mission--was: "Can't you and Lottie hurry up that marriage of yours? You ought to get it over and out of the way." When I returned home with my mission accomplished, the first remark my mother made after our greeting was: "Harvey, I wish you and Lottie were going to marry a little sooner." A note in her voice made me look swiftly at her, and then, without a word, I was on my knees, my face in her lap and she stroking my head. "I feel that I'm going to--to your father, dear," she said. I heard and I thought I realized; but I did not. Who, feeling upon him the living hand of love, was ever able to imagine that hand other than alive? But her look of illness, of utter exhaustion,--_that_ I understood and suffered for. "You must rest," said I; "you must sit quiet and be waited on until you are strong again." "Yes, I will rest," she answered, "as soon as my boy is settled." That very day I wrote Carlotta telling her about mother's health and asking her to change the date of our wedding to the first week in August, then just under a month away. She telegraphed me to come and talk it over. She was at the station in her phaeton to meet me. We had not driven far before I felt and saw that she was intensely irritated against me. As I unburdened my mind of my anxieties about mother, she listened coldly. And I had to wait a long time before I got her answer, in a strained voice and with averted eyes: "Of course, I'm sorry your mother isn't well, but I can't get ready that soon." It was not her words that exasperated me; the lightning of speech from the storm-clouds of anger tends to clear the air. It was her expression.