“I do not,” Margaret answered coldly.

“I was trying to get the courage to ask you to be my wife.”

She gave a queer laugh.  “Well, you seem to have got what you sought,” said she.  He had, as usual, taken her wholly unawares.

“Not so fast,” replied Craig.  “I haven’t asked you yet.”

Margaret did not know whether she most wished to laugh or to burst out in anger.  “I’m sure I don’t care anything about it, one way or the other,” said she.

“Why say those insincere things—­to me?” he urged.  She had begun to walk, and he was keeping pace with her.  “Jackson,” he proceeded, “was a man of absolute courage.  He took the woman he wanted—­defied public opinion to do it—­and it only made him the more popular.  I had always intended to strengthen myself by marrying.  If I married you I’d weaken myself politically, while if I married some Western girl, some daughter of the people, I’d make a great popular stroke.”

“Well—­do it, then,” said Margaret.  “By all means do it.”

“Oh, but there’s you,” exclaimed Craig.  “What’d I do about you?”

“That’s true,” said Margaret mockingly.  “But what am I to stand between a man and ambition?”

“I say that to myself,” replied Craig.  “But it’s no use.”  His eyes thrilled her, his voice seemed to melt her dislike, her resolve, as he said:  “There you are, and there you stay, Margaret.  And you’re not at all fit to be my wife.  You haven’t been brought up right.  You ought to marry some man like Grant.  He’s just the man for you.  Why did you ever fall in love with me?”

She stopped short, stared at him in sheer amazement.  “I!” exclaimed she.  “I—­in love with you!”

He halted before her.  “Margaret,” he said tenderly, “can you deny it?”

She flushed; hung her head.  The indignant denial died upon her lips.

He sighed.  “You see, it is fate,” said he.  “But I’ll manage it somehow.  I’ll win out in spite of any, of every handicap.”

She eyed him furtively.  Yes, if she wished to make a marriage of ambition she could not do better.  All Washington was laughing at him; but she felt she had penetrated beneath the surface that excited their mirth—­had seen qualities that would carry him wherever he wished to go—­wherever she, with her grandmother’s own will, wished him to go.

“And,” pursued he, “I’m far too rough and coarse for you—­you, the quintessence of aristocracy.”

She flushed with double delight—­delight at this flattery and the deeper delight a woman feels when a man shows her the weakness in himself by which she can reach and rule him.

“I’m always afraid of offending your delicacy,” he went fatuously on.  “You’re the only person I ever felt that way about.  Absolutely the only one.  But you’ve got to expect that sort of thing in a man who prevails in such a world as this.  When men get too high-toned and aristocratic, too fussy about manners and dress, along come real men to ride them down and under.  But I’ll try to be everything you wish—­to you.  Not to the others.  That would defeat our object; for I’m going to take my wife high—­very high.”