eks. Why was it funny, I'd like to know?"

"Great heavens, Lindsay--you're not going to take it that way? I insult
you--laugh at you! I'd give my life; I'd shoot down any one--Lindsay!"
he broke out appealingly, and made a step toward her.

"Don't touch me!" she cried. "Don't touch me! I hate you!" And as he
still came closer she turned and ran up the path, into the moonlight of
the driveway, and so, a dim white blotch on the fragrant night,
disappeared.

When the Governor, walking with dignity, came up the steps of the porch,
three minutes later, he was greeted with questions.

"What have you done to Lindsay Lee, I'd like to know?" asked Alice
McNaughton. "She said she had fallen and hurt her foot, but she wouldn't
let me go up with her, and she was dignified, which is awfully trying.
Why did you quarrel with her, this last night?"

"Governor," said Chuck, with more discernment than delicacy, "if you
will accept the sympathies of one not unacquainted with grief--" But at
this point his voice faded away as he looked at the Governor.

The Governor never remembered just how he got away from the friendly
hatefulness of that porchful. An early train the next morning was
inevitable, for there was a meeting of real importance this time, and at
all events everything looked about the same shade of gray to him; it
mattered very little what he did. Only he must be doing something every
moment. He devoured work as if it were bread and meat and he were
famished. People said all that autumn and winter that anything like the
Governor's energy had never been seen. He evidently wanted a second
term, and really he ought to have it. He was working hard enough to get
it. About New-Year's he went down to Bristol for the first time since
June, for a dinner at the McNaughtons'. Alice McNaughton's friendly
face, under its red-gold hair, beamed at him from far away down the
table, but after dinner, when the men came in from the dining-room, she
took possession of him boldly.

"Governor, I want to tell you about Lindsay Lee. I know you'll be
interested, though you did have some mysterious fight before she left.
She's been awfully ill with pleurisy, a painful attack, and she's
getting well very slowly. They have just taken her to Paul Smith's. I'm
writing her to-morrow, and I want you to send a good message; it would
please her."

It was hard to stand with eighteen people grouped about him, all more or
less with an eye on his motions, a