“You know better about the financial part of it than I do.  But—­well, you are fresh from this anarchistic conclave at the Opera House.  You can imagine what the stock of the Western Pacific, or of any other foreign corporation doing business in this State, will be worth in six months after Bucks and his crowd get into the saddle.”

“You speak as if the result of the election were a foregone conclusion.  I hope it isn’t.  But we were talking more particularly of Miss Brentwood, and your personal responsibilities.”  The belated train was whistling for the lower yard, and Loring was determined to say all that was in his mind.

“Yes; go on.  I’m anxious to hear—­more anxious than I seem to be, perhaps.”

“Well, she is coming West, after a bit.  She, and her sister and the mother.  Mrs. Brentwood’s asthma is worse, and the wise men have ordered her to the interior.  I thought you’d like to know.”

“Is she—­are they coming this way?” asked Kent.

The train was in, and the porter had fetched Loring’s hand-bag from the check-stand.  The guest paused with one foot on the step of the sleeping-car.

“If I were you, David, I’d write and ask; I should, by Jove.  It would be a tremendously cheeky thing to do, of course, having such a slight acquaintance with her as you have; but I’ll be hanged if I shouldn’t chance it.  And in the mean time, if I don’t go back East next week, you’ll hear from me.  When you do, or if you do, take a day off and run up to the capital.  I shall need you.  Good-by.”

Kent watched the train pull out; stood looking after it until the two red eyes of the rear signals had disappeared in the dusty darkness of the illimitable plain.  Then he went to his rooms, to the one which was called by courtesy his office, and without allowing himself time for a nice balancing of the pros and cons, squared himself at the desk to write a letter.

III

THE BOSTONIANS

It was precisely on the day set for the Brentwoods’ westward flitting that the postman, making his morning round, delivered David Kent’s asking at the house in the Back Bay sub-district.  Elinor was busy packing for the migration, but she left Penelope and the maid to cope with the problem of compressing two trunkfuls into one while she read the letter, and she was reading it a second time when Mr. Brookes Ormsby’s card came up.

“You go, Penelope,” she begged.  “There is so much to do.”

“Not I,” said the younger sister, cavalierly; “he didn’t come to see me.”  Whereupon Elinor smoothed the two small wrinkles of impatience out of her brow, tucked her letter into her bosom, and went down to meet the early morning caller.

Mr. Brookes Ormsby, club-man, gentleman of athletic leisure, and inheritor of the Ormsby millions, was pacing back and forth before the handful of fire in the drawing-room grate when she entered.