A girl, slender and delicately made, stood before him, a girl with an exquisite grace and a nameless charm–the something that lurks in the fragrance of the violet. Her eyes were not the quiet, solemn eyes of the little princess of his fairy tales, but the deep, fathomless eyes of a maiden.

A reminiscent smile stole over his face.

“The little princess!” he murmured, taking her hand.

The words brought a flush of color to her fair face.

“The prince is a politician now,” she replied.

“The prince has to be a politician to fight for his kingdom. Have you been here all the evening?”

“Yes; father and I sat with your party. But you were altogether too absorbed to glance our way.”

“Are you visiting in the city? Will you be here long?”

“For to-night only. I’ve been West with father, and we only stopped off to see what a senatorial fight was like; also, to hear you speak. To-morrow we return East, and then mother and I shall go abroad. Father,” calling to Mr. Winthrop, “I am renewing my acquaintance with Mr. Dunne.”

“I wish to do the same,” he said, extending his hand cordially. “I expect to be able to tell people some day that I used to fish in a country stream with the governor of this state when he was a boy.”

After a few moments of general conversation they all left the statehouse together.

“Carey,” said Mr. Winthrop, “I am going with the Judge to the club, so I will put you in David’s hands. I believe you have no afraidments with him.”

“That has come to be a household phrase with us,” she laughed; “but you forget, father, that Mr. Dunne has official duties.”

“If you only knew,” David assured her earnestly, “how thankful I am for a release from them. My task is ended, and I don’t wish to celebrate in the usual and political way.”

“There is a big military ball at the hotel,” informed Joe. “Mrs. Thorne and I thought we would like to go and look on.”

“A fine idea, Joe. Maybe you would like to go?” he said to Carey, trying to make his tone urgent.

She laughed at his dismayed expression.

“No; you may walk to the Bradens’ with me. We couldn’t get in at the hotels, and father met Major Braden on the street. He is instructor or something of the militia of this state, and has gone to the ball with his wife. They supposed that this contest would last far into the night, so they planned to be home before we were.”

“We will get a carriage as soon as we are out of the grounds.”

“Have you come to carriages?” she asked, laughingly. “You used to say if you couldn’t ride horseback, or walk, you would stand still.”

“And you agreed with me that carriages were only for the slow, the stupid, and the infirm,” he recalled. “It’s a glorious night. Would you rather walk, really?”

“Really.”

At the entrance to the grounds they parted from the others and went up one of the many avenues radiating from the square.

The air was full of snowflakes, moving so softly and so slowly they scarcely seemed to fall. The electric lights of the city shone cheerfully through the white mist, and the sound of distant mirthmakers fell pleasantly on the ear.

“Snow is the only picture part of winter,” said Carey. “Do you remember the story of the Snow Princess?”

“You must have a wonderful memory!” he exclaimed. “You were only six years old when I told you that story.”

“I have a very vivid memory,” she replied. “Sometimes it almost frightens me.”

“Do you know,” he said, “that I think people that have dreams and fancies do look backward farther than matter-of-fact people, who let things out of sight go out of mind?”

“You were full of dreams then, but I don’t believe you are now. Of course, politicians have no time or inclination for dreams.”

“No; they usually have a dread of dreams. Would you rather have found me still a dreamer?” he asked, looking down into her dark eyes, which drooped beneath the intensity of his gaze.

Then her delicate face, misty with sweetness, turned toward him again.

“No; dreams are for children and for old people, whose memories, like their eyes, are for things far off. This is your time to do things, not to dream them. And you have done things. I heard Major Braden telling father about you at dinner–your success in law, your getting some bill killed in the legislature, and your having been to South America. Father says you have had a wonderful career for a young man. I used to think when I was a little girl that when you were a grown-up prince you would kill dragons and bring home golden fleeces.”

He smiled with a sudden deep throb of pleasure. Her voice stirred him with a sense of magic.

“This is the Braden home,” she said, stopping before a big house that seemed to be all pillars and porches. “You’ll come in for a little while, won’t you?”

“I’ll come in, if I may, and help you to recall some more of Maplewood days.”

A trim little maid opened the door and led the way into a long library where in the fireplace a pine backlog, crisscrossed by sturdy forelogs of birch and maple, awaited the touch of a match. It was given, and the room was filled with a flaring light that made the soft lamplight seem pale and feeble.

“This is a genuine Brumble fire,” he exclaimed, as they sat down before the ruddy glow. “It carries me back to farm life.”

“How many phases of life you have seen,” mused Carey. “Country, college, city, tropical, and now this political life. Which one have you really enjoyed the most?”

“My life in the Land of Dreams–that beautiful Isle of Everywhere,” he replied.

Her eyes grew radiant with understanding.

“You are not so very much changed since your days of dreaming,” she said, smiling. “To be sure, you have lost your freckles and you don’t kick at the ground when you walk, and–”

“And,” he reminded, as she paused.

“You are no longer twice my age.”

“Did Janey tell you?”

“Yes; the last summer I was at Maplewood–the summer you were graduated. You say you don’t dream any more, but it wasn’t so very long ago that you did, else how could you have written that wonderful book?”

“Then you read it?” he asked eagerly.

“Of course I read it.”

“All of it?”

“Could any one begin it and not finish it? I’ve read some parts of it many times.”

“Did you,” he asked slowly, holding her eyes in spite of her desire to lower them, “read the dedication?”

And by their subtle confession he knew that this was one of the parts she had read “many times.”

“Yes,” she replied, trying to speak lightly, but breathing quickly, “and I wondered who T. L. P. might be.”

“And so you didn’t know,” in slow, disappointed tones, “that they stood for the name I gave you when I first met you–the name by which I always think of you? It was with your perfect understanding of my old fancies in mind that I wrote the book. And so I dedicated it to you, thinking if you read it you would know even without the inscription. Some one suggested–”

“It was Fletcher,” she began.

“Oh, you know Wilder?”

“Yes, I’ve known him always. He has told me of your days in South America together and how he told you to dedicate it. And he wondered who T. L. P. might be.”

“And you never guessed?”

Her face, bent over the firelight, looked small and white; her beautiful eyes were fixed and grave. Then suddenly she lifted them to his with the artlessness of a child.

“I did know,” she confessed. “At least, I hoped–I claimed it as my book, anyway, but I thought your memory of those summers at the farm might not have been as keen as mine.”

“It is keen,” he replied. “I have always thought of you as a little princess who only lived in my dreams, but, hereafter, you are not only in my past dreams, but I hope, in my future.”

“When we come back–”

“Will you be gone long?” he asked wistfully. “Is your father–”

“Father can’t go, but he may join us.”

After a moment’s hesitation she continued, with a slight blush:

“Fletcher is going with us.”

“Oh,” he said, wondering at his tinge of disappointment.

“Carey,” he said wistfully, as he was leaving, “don’t you think when a man dedicates a book to a girl, and they both have a joint claim on a territory known as the Land of Dreams, that she might call him, as she did when they were boy and girl, by his first name?”

“Yes, David,” she replied with a light little laugh.

The music of the soft “a” rang entrancingly in his ears as he walked back to the hotel.

CHAPTER V

There was but one important measure to deal with in this session of the legislature, but David’s penetration into a thorough understanding of each bill, and the patience and sagacity he displayed in settling all disputes, won the approbation of even doubtful and divided factions. He flashed a new fire of life into the ebbing enthusiasm of his followers, whom he had led to victory on the Griggs Bill. At the close of the session, early in May, he was presented with a set of embossed resolutions commending his fulfillment of his duties.

That same night, in his room at the hotel, as he was packing his belongings, he was waited upon by a delegation composed alike of horny-handed tillers of the soil and distinguished statesmen.

“We come, David,” said the spokesman, who had been chairman of the county convention, “to say that you are our choice for the next governor of this state, and in saying this we know we are echoing the sentiment of the Republican party. In fact, we are looking to you as the only man who can bring that party to victory.”

He said many more things, flattering and echoed by his followers. It made the blood tingle in David’s veins to know that these men of plain, honest, country stock, like himself, believed in him and in his honor. In kaleidoscopic quickness there passed in review his life,–the days when he and his mother had struggled with a wretched poverty that the neighbors had only half suspected, the first turning point in his life, when he was taken unto the hearth and home of strong-hearted people, his years at college, the plodding days in pursuit of the law, his hotly waged fight in the legislature, and his short literary career, and he felt a surging of boyish pride at the knowledge that he was now approaching his goal.

The next morning David went to Lafferton in order to discuss the road to the ruling of the people.

“Whom would you suggest for manager of my campaign, Uncle Barnabas?” he asked.

“Knowles came to me and offered his services. Couldn’t have a slicker man, Dave.”

“None better in the state. I shouldn’t have ventured to ask him.”

Janey was home for the summer, and on the first evening of his return she and David sat together on the porch.

“Oh, Davey,” she said with a little sob, “Jud has come home again, and they say he isn’t just wild any more, but thoroughly bad.”

The tears in her eyes and the tremor in her tone stirred all his old protective instinct for her.

“Poor Jud! I’ll see if I can’t awaken some ambition in him for a different life.”

“You’ve been very patient, Davey, but do try again. Every one is down on him now but father and you and me. Aunt M’ri has let the Judge prejudice her; Joe hasn’t a particle of patience with him, and he can’t understand how I can have any, but you do, Davey. You understand everything.”

They sat in silence, watching the stars pierce vividly through the blackness of the sky, and presently his thoughts strayed from Jud and from his fair young sister. In fancy he saw the queenly carriage of an imperious little head, the mystery lurking in a pair of purple eyes, and heard the cadence in an exquisite voice.

The next morning he began the fight, and there was an incessant cannonade from start to finish against the upstart boy nominee, who proved to be an adversary of unremitting activity, the tact and experience of Knowles making a fortified intrenchment for him. All of David’s friends rallied strongly to his support. Hume came from Washington, Joe from the ranch, and Wilder from the East, his father having a branch concern in the state.

Through the long, hot summer the warfare waged, and by mid-autumn it seemed a neck and neck contest–a contest so susceptible that the merest breath might turn the tide at any moment. The week before the election found David still resolute, grim, and determined. Instead of being discouraged by adverse attacks he had gained new vigor from each downthrow. All forces rendezvoused at the largest city in the state for the final engagement.

Three days before election he received a note in a handwriting that had become familiar to him during the past year. With a rush of surprise and pleasure he noted the city postmark. The note was very brief, merely mentioning the hotel at which they were stopping and asking him to call if he could spare a few moments from his campaign work.

In an incredibly short time after the receipt of this note he was at the hotel, awaiting an answer to his card. He was shown to the sitting room of the suite, and Carey opened the door to admit him. This was not the little princess of his dreams, nor the charming young girl who had talked so ingenuously with him before the Braden fireside. This was a woman, stately yet gracious, vigorous yet exquisite.

“I am glad we came home in time to see you elected,” she said. “It is a great honor, David, to be the governor of your state.”

There was a shade of deference in her manner to him which he realized was due to the awe with which she regarded the dignity of his elective office. This amused while it appealed to him.

“We are on our way to California to spend the winter,” she replied, in answer to his eager question, “and father proposed stopping here until after election.”

“You come in and out of my life like a comet,” he complained wistfully.

Mrs. Winthrop came in, smiling and charming as ever. She was very cordial to David, and interested in his campaign, but it seemed to him that she was a little too gracious, as if she wished to impress him with the fact that it was a concession to meet him on an equal social footing. For Mrs. Winthrop was inclined to be of the world, worldly.

“You have arrived at an auspicious time,” he assured her. “To-night the Democrats will have the biggest parade ever scheduled for this city. Joe calls it the round-up.”

“Oh, is Joe here?” asked Carey eagerly.

“Yes; and another friend of yours, Fletcher Wilder.”

“I knew that he was here,” she said, with an odd little smile.

“We had expected to see him in New York, and were surprised to learn he was out here,” said Mrs. Winthrop.

“He came to help me in my campaign,” informed David.

“Fletcher interested in politics! How strange!”

“His interest is purely personal. We were together in South America, you know.”

“I am glad that you have a friend in him,” said Mrs. Winthrop affably. “The parade will pass here, and Fletcher is coming up, of course. Why not come up, too, if you can spare the time?”

“This is not my night,” laughed David. “It’s purely and simply a Democratic night. I shall be pleased to come.”

“Bring Joe, too,” reminded Carey.

When Mr. Winthrop came in David had no doubt as to the welcome he received from the head of the family.

“A man’s measure of a man,” thought David, “is easily taken, and by natural laws, but oh, for an understanding of the scales by which women weigh! And yet it is they who hold the balance.”

“Fletcher and David and Joe are coming to-night to watch the parade from here,” said Carey.

“You shall all dine with us,” said Mr. Winthrop.

“Thank you,” replied David, “but–”

“Oh, but you must,” insisted Mrs. Winthrop, who always warmly seconded any proffer of hospitality made by her husband. “Fletcher will dine with us, of course. We can have a little dinner served here in our rooms. Write a note to Mr. Forbes, Carey.”

The marked difference in type of her three guests as they entered the sitting room that night struck Mrs. Winthrop forcibly. Joe, lean and brown, with laughing eyes, was the typical frontiersman; Fletcher, quiet and substantial looking, with his air of culture and ease and his modulated voice, was the type of a city man; David–“What a man he is!” she was forced to admit as he stood, head uplifted in the white glare under the chandelier, the brilliant light shining upon his dark hair, and his eyes glowing like stars. His lithe figure, perfect in poise and balance, of virile strength that was toil-proof, wore the look of the outdoor life. His smile banished everything that was ordinary from his face and transmuted it into a glowing personality. His eyes, serious with that insight of the observer who knows what is going on without and within, were clear and steady.

The table was laid for six in the sitting room, the flowers and candles giving it a homelike look.

As Mrs. Winthrop listened to the conversation between her husband and David she was forced to admit that the young candidate for governor was a man of mark.

“I never knew a man without good birth to have such perfect breeding,” she thought. “He really appears as well as Fletcher, and, well, of course, he has more temperament. If he could have been born on a different plane,” thinking of her long line of Virginia ancestors.

She had ceded a great deal to her husband’s and Carey’s democracy, and reserved many an unfavorable criticism of their friends and their friends’ ways with a tactfulness that had blinded their eyes to her true feelings. Yet David knew instinctively her standpoint; she partly suspected that he knew, and the knowledge did not disturb her; she intuitively gauged his pride, and welcomed it, for a suitor of the Fletcher Wilder station of life was more to her liking.

Carey led David away from her father’s political discourse, and encouraged him to give reminiscences of old days. Joe told a few inimitable western stories, and before the cozy little meal was finished Mrs. Winthrop, though against her will, was feeling the compelling force of David’s winning sweetness. The sound of a distant band hurried them from the table to the balcony.

“They’ve certainly got a fair showing of floating banners and transformations,” said Joe.

As the procession came nearer the face of the hardy ranchman flushed crimson and his eyes flashed dangerously. He made a quick motion as if to obstruct David’s vision, but the young candidate had already seen. He stood as if at bay, his face pale, his eyes riveted on those floating banners which bore in flaming letters the inscriptions:

“The father of David Dunne died in state prison!”

“His mother was a washerwoman!”

CHAPTER VI

The others were stricken into shocked silence which they were too stunned for the moment to break. It was Fletcher who recovered first, but then Fletcher was the only one present who did not know that the words had struck home.

“We mustn’t wait another moment, David,” he said emphatically, “to get out sweeping denials and–”

“We can’t,” said David wearily. “It is true.”

“Oh,” responded Fletcher lamely.

There was another silence. Something in David’s voice and manner had made the silence still more constrained.

“I’ll go down and smash their banners!” muttered Joe, who had not dared to look in David’s direction.

Mr. Winthrop restrained him.

“The matter will take care of itself,” he counseled.

It is mercifully granted that the intensity of present suffering is not realized. Only in looking back comes the pang, and the wonder at the seemingly passive endurance.

Again David’s memory was bridging the past to unveil that vivid picture of the patient-eyed woman bending over the tub, and the pity for her was hurting him more than the cruel banner which was flaunting the fact before a jeering, applauding crowd.

Mrs. Winthrop gave him a covert glance. She had great pride in her lineage, and her well-laid plans for her daughter’s future did not include David Dunne in their scope, but she was ever responsive to distress.

Before the look in his eyes every sensation save that of sympathy left her, and she went to him as she would have gone to a child of her own that had been hurt.

“David,” she said tenderly, laying her hand on his arm, “any woman in the world might be glad to take in washing to bring up a boy to be such a man as you are!”

Deeply moved and surprised, he looked into her brimming eyes and met there the look he had sometimes seen in the eyes of his mother, of M’ri, and once in the eyes of Janey. Moved by an irresistible impulse, he stooped and kissed her.

The situation was relieved of its tenseness.

“I think, Joe,” said David, speaking collectedly, “we had better go to headquarters. Knowles will be looking for me.”

“Sure,” assented Joe, eager to get into action.

“Carey,” said David in a low voice, as he was leaving.

As she turned to him, an impetuous rush of new life leaped torrent-like in his heart. Her eyes met his slowly, and for a moment he felt a pleasure acute with the exquisiteness of pain. Such sensations are usually transient, and in another moment he had himself well in hand.

“I want to say good night,” he said quietly, “and–”

“Will you come here to-morrow at eleven?” she asked hurriedly. “There is something I want to say to you.”

“I know that you are sorry for me.”

“That isn’t what I mean to say.”

A wistful but imperious message was flashed to him from her eyes.

“I will come,” he replied gravely.

When he reached headquarters he found the committee dismayed and distracted. Like Wilder, they counseled a sweeping denial, but David was firm.

“It is true,” he reiterated.

“It will cost us the vote of a certain element,” predicted the chairman, “and we haven’t one to spare.”

David listened to a series of similar sentiments until Knowles–a new Knowles–came in. The usual blank placidity of his face was rippled by radiant exultation.

“David,” he announced, “before that parade started to-night I had made out another conservative estimate, and thought I could pull you through by a slight majority. Now, it’s different. While you may lose some votes from the ‘near-silk stocking’ class, yet for every vote so lost hundreds will rally to you. That all men are created equal is still a truth held to be self-evident. The spark of the spirit that prompted the Declaration of Independence is always ready to be fanned to a flame, and the Democrats have furnished us the fans in their flying pennants.”

David found no balm in this argument. All the wounds in his heart were aching, and he could not bring his thoughts to majorities. He passed a night of nerve-racking strain. The jeopardy of election did not concern him. That night at the dinner party he had realized that he had a formidable rival in Fletcher, who had a place firmly fixed in the Winthrop household. Still, against odds, he had determined to woo and win Carey.

He had thought to tell her of his father’s imprisonment under softening influences. To have it flashed ruthlessly upon her in such a way, and at such a time, made him shrink from asking her to link her fate with his, and he decided to put her resolutely out of his life.

Unwillingly, he went to keep his appointment with her the next morning. He also dreaded an encounter with Mrs. Winthrop. He felt that the reaction from her moment of womanly pity would strand her still farther on the rocks of her worldliness. He was detained on his way to the hotel so that it was nearly twelve when he arrived. It was a relief to find Carey alone. There was an appealing look in her eyes; but David felt that he could bear no expression of sympathy, and he trusted she would obey the subtle message flashed from his own.

With keen insight she read his unspoken appeal, but a high courage dwelt in the spirit of the little Puritan of colonial ancestry, and she summoned its full strength.

“David,” she asked, “did you think I was ignorant of your early life until I read those banners last night?”

“I thought,” he said, flushing and taken by surprise, “that you might have long ago heard something, but to have it recalled in so sensational a way when you were entertaining me at dinner–”

“David, the first day I met you, when I was six years old, Mrs. Randall told us of your father. I didn’t know just what a prison was, but I supposed it something very grand, and it widened the halo of romance that my childish eyes had cast about you. The morning after you had nominated Mr. Hume I saw your aunt at the hotel, and she told me, for she said some day I might hear it from strangers and not understand. When I saw those banners it was not so much sympathy for you that distressed me; I was thinking of your mother, and regretting that she could not be alive to hear you speak, and see what her bravery had done for you.”

David had to summon all his control and his recollection of her Virginia ancestors to refrain from telling her what was in his heart. Mrs. Winthrop helped him by her entrance at this crucial point.

“Good morning, David,” she said suavely. “Carey, Fletcher is waiting for you at the elevator. Your father stopped him. I told him you would be out directly.”

“I had an engagement to drive with him,” explained Carey. “I thought you would come earlier.”

“I am due at a committee meeting,” he said, in a courteous but aloof manner.

“We start in the morning, you know,” she reminded him. “Won’t you dine here with us to-night?”

“I am sorry,” he refused. “It will be impossible.”

“Arthur is going to a club for luncheon,” said Mrs. Winthrop, when Carey had gone into the adjoining room, “and I shall be alone unless you will take pity on my loneliness. I won’t detain you a moment after luncheon.”

“Thank you,” he replied abstractedly.

She smiled at the reluctance in his eyes.

“David is going to stay to luncheon with me,” she announced to Carey as she came into the sitting room.

David winced at the huge bunch of violets fastened to her muff. He remembered with a pang that Fletcher had left him that morning to go to a florist’s. After she had gone Mrs. Winthrop turned suddenly toward him, as he was gazing wistfully at the closed door.

“David,” she asked directly, “why did you refuse our invitation to dine to-night?”

“Why–you see–Mrs. Winthrop–with so many engagements–there is a factory meeting at five–”

“David, you are floundering! That is not like the frankly spoken boy we used to know at Maplewood. I kept you to luncheon to tell you some news that even Carey doesn’t know yet. Mrs. Randall has written insisting that we spend a week at Maplewood before we go West. As we are in no special haste, I shall accept her hospitality.”

David made no reply, and she continued:

“You are going home the day before election?”

“Yes, Mrs. Winthrop,” he replied.

“We will go down with you, and I hope you will be neighborly while we are in the country.”

The bewildered look in his eyes deepened, and then a heartrending solution of her graciousness came to him. Fletcher and Carey were doubtless engaged, and this fact made Mrs. Winthrop feel secure in extending hospitality to him.

“Thank you, Mrs. Winthrop,” he said, a little bitterly. “You are very kind.”

“David,” she asked, giving him a searching look. “What is the matter? I thought you would be pleased at the thought of our spending a week among you all.”

He made a quick, desperate decision.

“Mrs. Winthrop,” he asked earnestly, “may I speak to you quite openly and honestly?”

“David Dunne, you couldn’t speak any other way,” she asserted, with a gay little laugh.

“I love Carey!”