began to perceive,
dimly, things that might become the elements of a tragedy, even as Mr.
Merrill had perceived them some months before. Could a union endure
between so delicate a creature as the girl before him and Jethro Bass?
Could Cynthia ever go back to him again, and live with him happily,
without seeing many things which before were hidden by reason of her
youth and innocence?

Bob had not been nearly four years at college without learning something
of the world; and it had not needed the lecture from his father, which he
got upon leaving Washington, to inform him of Jethro's political
practices. He had argued soundly with his father on that occasion, having
the courage to ask Mr. Worthington in effect whether he did not sanction
his underlings to use the same tools as Jethro used. Mr. Worthington was
righteously angry, and declared that Jethro had inaugurated those
practices in the state, and had to be fought with his own weapons. But
Mr. Worthington had had the sense at that time not to mention Cynthia's
name. He hoped and believed that that affair was not serious, and merely
a boyish fancy--as indeed it was.

It remains to be said, however, that the lecture had not been without its
effect upon Bob. Jethro Bass, after all, was--Jethro Bass. All his life
Bob had heard him familiarly and jokingly spoken of as the boss of the
state, and had listened to the tales, current in all the country towns,
of how Jethro had outwitted this man or that. Some of them were not
refined tales. Jethro Bass as the boss of the state--with the tolerance
with which the public in general regard politics--was one thing. Bob was
willing to call him "Uncle Jethro," admire his great strength and
shrewdness, and declare that the men he had outwitted had richly deserved
it. But Jethro Bass as the ward of Cynthia Wetherell was quite another
thing.

It was not only that Cynthia had suddenly and inevitably become a lady.
That would not have mattered, for such as she would have borne Coniston
and the life of Coniston cheerfully. But Bob reflected, as he walked back
to his rooms in the dark through the snow-laden streets, that Cynthia,
young though she might be, possessed principles from which no love would
sway her a hair's breadth. How, indeed, was she to live with Jethro once
her eyes were opened?

The thought made him angry, but returned to him persistently during the
days that followed,--in the lecture room, in the gymnasium, in his own