"You really were," she returned. "Just a little--and so was I. It was more a matter of voice and manner, of course; but we didn't appear to our greatest advantage, I am afraid. And we have never done things like that, you know, and it would be rather bad to begin now, wouldn't it?" "It certainly would," he replied. "And it is very nice in you to care about it." "It would not be nice in me not to care," she said. "Just for a moment, you know, it actually sounded quite--quite married. It seemed as if we were on the verge of agreeing to differ about--Senator Planefield." "We won't do it again," he said. "We will agree to make the best of him." She hesitated a second. "I will try not to make the worst," she returned. "There is always a best, I suppose. And so long as you are here to take care of me, I need not--need not be uncomfortable." "About what?" he asked. She hesitated again, and a shade of new color touched her cheek. "I don't think I am over-fastidious," she said, "but he has a way I don't like. He is too fulsome. He admires me too much. He pays me too many compliments. I wish he would not do it." "Oh! come, now," he said, gayly, "that _is_ prejudice! It is worse than all the rest. I never heard you complain of your admirers before, or of their compliments." She hesitated a moment again. It was not the first time she had encountered this light and graceful obstinacy, and found it more difficult to cope with than words apparently more serious. "I have never had an admirer of exactly that quality before," she said. "Oh," he said, airily, "don't argue from the ground that it is a bad quality!" "Has it never struck you," she suggested, "that there is something of the same quality, whether it is good, bad, or indifferent, in all the persons who are connected with the Westoria lands? I have felt once or twice lately, when I have looked around the parlors, as if I must have suddenly emigrated, the atmosphere was so different. They have actually rather crowded out the rest--those men." It was his turn to pause now, and he did so, looking out of the window, evidently ill at ease, and hesitant for the moment. "My dear child," he said, at length, "there may be truth in what you say; but--I may as well be frank with you--the thing is necessary." "Richard," she said, quickly, prompted to the question by a sudden, vague thought, "what have _you_ to do with the Westoria lands? Why do you care so much about them?" "I have everything to do with them--and nothing," he answered. "The legal business connected with them, and likely to result from the success of the scheme, will be the making of me, that is all. I haven't been an immense success so far, you know, and it will make me an immense success and a man of property. Upon my word, a nice little lobbyist _you_ are, to look frightened at the mere shadow of a plot!"