as it went; and yet
because it was not the whole truth, because his delay was due, not to
his return for the paper, but to his meeting with Patty Vetch in the
Square, his conscience pricked him uncomfortably. When deceit was so
easy it ceased to be a temptation.

She looked at him with an expression of guileless sympathy. "After
working all day I should think you would be tired," she murmured. That
was the way she would always cover up his errors, large or small, he
knew, with a trusting sweetness which made him feel there was dishonour
in the merest tinge of dissimulation.

Mary Byrd was talking as usual in high fluting notes which drowned the
gentle ripple of Margaret's voice.

"I was just telling Margaret about the charity ball," she said, "and the
way the girls snubbed Patty Vetch in the dressing-room."

"And it was a very good account of young barbarians at play," commented
Mr. Culpeper, who was a romantic soul and still read his Byron.

"Patty Vetch? Why, isn't that the daughter of the Governor?" asked Mrs.
Culpeper, without a trace of her husband's sympathy for the victim of
the "snubbing." A moment later, in accordance with her mental attitude
of evasive idealism, she added briskly: "I try not to think of that man
as Governor of Virginia."

Of course the subject had come up. Wherever Stephen had been in the past
few weeks he had found that the conversation turned to the Governor; and
it struck him, while he followed the line of girls headed by his
mother's erect figure into the dining-room, that, for good or bad, the
influence of Gideon Vetch was as prevalent as an epidemic. All through
the long and elaborate meal, in which the viands that his ancestors had
preferred were served ceremoniously by slow-moving coloured servants, he
listened again to the familiar discussion and analysis of the demagogue,
as he still called him. How little, after all, did any one know of
Gideon Vetch? Since he had been in office what had they learned except
that he was approachable in human relations and unapproachable in
political ones?

"I wonder if Stephen noticed the girl at the ball?" said Mrs. Culpeper
suddenly, looking tenderly at her son across the lovely George II
candlesticks and the dish of expensive fruit, for she could never
reconcile with her ideas of economy the spending of a penny on
decorations so ephemeral as flowers.

"Oh, he couldn't have helped it," responded Mary Byrd. "Every one saw
her. She was dres