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“On the contrary,” said the Governor, “it implies, on your part, a personal knowledge of Mr. Ashford’s qualifications which may be of great help to me in reaching a decision.”

Mrs. Nimick never quite knew how to meet him when he took that tone, and the flickering fire made her face for a moment the picture of uncertainty; then at all hazards she launched out: “Well, I have Ella’s promise, at any rate.”

The Governor sat upright. “Ella’s promise?”

“To back me up. She thoroughly approves of him!”

The Governor smiled. “You talk as if Ella had a political salonand distributed lettres de cachet! I’m glad she approves of Ashford; but if you think my wife makes my appointments for me–” He broke off with a laugh at the superfluity of such a protest.

Mrs. Nimick reddened. “One never knows how you will take the simplest thing. What harm is there in my saying that Ella approves of Mr. Ashford? I thought you liked her to take an interest in your work.”

“I like it immensely. But I shouldn’t care to have it take that form.”

“What form?”

“That of promising to use her influence to get people appointed. But you always talk of politics in the vocabulary of European courts. Thank Heaven, Ella has less imagination. She has her sympathies, of course, but she doesn’t think they can affect the distribution of offices.”

Mrs. Nimick gathered up her furs with an air at once crestfallen and resentful. “I’m sorry–I always seem to say the wrong thing. I’m sure I came with the best intentions–it’s natural that your sister should want to be with you at such a happy moment.”

“Of course it is, my dear,” exclaimed the Governor genially, as he rose to grasp the hands with which she was nervously adjusting her wraps.

Mrs. Nimick, who lived a little way out of town, and whose visits to her brother were apparently achieved at the cost of immense effort and mysterious complications, had come to congratulate him on his victory, and to sound him regarding the nomination to a coveted post of the lawyer in whose firm her eldest son was a clerk. In the urgency of the latter errand she had rather lost sight of the former, but her face softened as the Governor, keeping both her hands in his, said in the voice which always seemed to put the most generous interpretation on her motives: “I was sure you would be one of the first to give me your blessing.”

“Oh, your success–no one feels it more than I do!” sighed Mrs. Nimick, always at home in the emotional key. “I keep in the background. I make no noise, I claim no credit, but whatever happens, no one shall ever prevent my rejoicing in my brother’s success!”

Mrs. Nimick’s felicitations were always couched in the conditional, with a side-glance at dark contingencies, and the Governor, smiling at the familiar construction, returned cheerfully: “I don’t see why any one should want to deprive you of that privilege.”

“They couldn’t–they couldn’t–” Mrs. Nimick heroically affirmed.

“Well, I’m in the saddle for another two years at any rate, so you had better put in all the rejoicing you can.”

“Whatever happens–whatever happens!” cried Mrs. Nimick, melting on his bosom.

“The only thing likely to happen at present is that you will miss your train if I let you go on saying nice things to me much longer.”

Mrs. Nimick at this dried her eyes, renewed her clutch on her draperies, and stood glancing sentimentally about the room while her brother rang for the carriage.

“I take away a lovely picture of you,” she murmured. “It’s wonderful what you’ve made of this hideous house.”

“Ah, not I, but Ella–there she doesreign undisputed,” he acknowledged, following her glance about the library, which wore an air of permanent habitation, of slowly formed intimacy with its inmates, in marked contrast to the gaudy impersonality of the usual executive apartment.

“Oh, she’s wonderful, quite wonderful. I see she has got those imported damask curtains she was looking at the other day at Fielding’s. When I am asked how she does it all, I always say it’s beyond me!” Mrs. Nimick murmured.