The girl disengaged herself from her father's embrace. The blood rushed to her face, and she laughed a little uneasily. After a moment she answered: "How can I tell! He--nobody's asked me. Has anybody asked you, father?" Wilkinson chuckled over her reply, though her evasiveness slightly irritated him. "Come," he said, "is it Berry Broughton, or Larry Pendexter, or Montgomery?" Her father rattled on without giving her a chance to answer, the girl's face growing more and more scarlet as he proceeded. "It must be Eliot Beekman or Tommy Cadwalader," he declared, searching her face. But still Leslie made no answer, though there was the same embarrassed flush upon her countenance. "Well, can't you tell me who it is?" he questioned impatiently. "I don't know," she protested, "really, I do not." "But I've got to know," persisted her father. But whether she could not or would not tell him, his efforts were unsuccessful, for she merely fled in a panic from the room. So that it was in a voice whose tone was one of defeat that he called out: "You can come now, Colonel!" From the heavy curtains Colonel Morehead emerged--a grim figure lying in ambush, he seemed, as he asked: "Well! who's the lucky man?" "Blamed if I could find out." "But I did. Eliot Beekman is the lucky man, Peter." "How do you know?" "You may think you know men, but, at any rate, you don't know women, Peter. I merely watched her face." "So did I," spluttered Wilkinson, "but I didn't...." "Peter, you asked me the name of my candidate for governor," said Morehead himself in a manner that suggested that he was quite ready to get down to business. "Well?" "His name is Eliot Beekman." Peter V. Wilkinson looked his surprise. "And why Beekman?" "One reason is because he's going to marry your daughter. I was satisfied of that, even before I heard this interview. But there are other reasons: he's a partisan; he's taken sides with you; the boy believes in you; and as long as your daughter sticks to him he's bound to believe in you, and he'll stick to you, too. Now, Peter, do you see why I've picked him for governor, and why I want your backing?" "There's one thing I don't quite see, and that is your real reason for wanting him for governor. Tell me that, will you, Colonel?" Colonel Morehead took his cigar from his mouth, and thrusting his face close to Wilkinson's, he said, speaking very distinctly so that his client should not misunderstand his meaning: "Because, my dear Peter, after you've spent your millions on appeals and bribes and legal curlyques--when you find at the end of the race that a ten-year term is still staring you in the face, it will be a deuced comfortable thing, Peter, to know that up in Albany you've got a friend, a partisan, a son-in-law _who's got the power to pardon_."