When the good-byes had been spoken and Muriel Morris was whirling away in an express towards the Capitol to plead for her husband's life, Jack sat long silent and motionless with the sweet, white bridal blossoms in his hands. Through their fragrance there seemed to come to him a new and comforting sense of the dearness and nearness of the one who had worn them, the one who held his whole heart's affection in her dear white hands, and who, wonderful to realise, now bore his name his wife!

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CHAPTER XIII

IT

WITH THE GOVERNOR

T was not the steep climb up the imposing Capitol steps nor the elevator's swift flight to the floor where the Executive offices were located that set Muriel's heart to beating so violently. She did not try to analyse her feelings, but she realised that she was sick with nervous dread. She was not a timid girl by nature, far from it. Self-reliance, a touch of reserve that amounted almost to aloofness, and a strong will had always made her a leader among the boys and girls of her set. Her mind worked quickly; her education had been of that sensible order that brings broadness of vision, and she was especially alive to an intuition concerning the thought and character of others. This gave her tact to act wisely where many might have blundered.

Still it must be remembered that she had been guarded in a very quiet home, so surrounded by love and sympathy that no harsh or bitter experi

ence had been allowed to enter her life. The only sorrow that had so far touched Muriel's experience had been the death of her mother and, intense as that anguish proved, it was filled with all the sweet memories of what that dear one had been to her. Even now the mother-influence seemed to linger on as a touch that would never be quite lost in the grave. It was pain without bitterness, loss without disaster. Now had come her first rude contact with the world, her first step into independent womanhood, and at the very entrance to this unknown, hazardous venture, she had been blest with the friendship of a strong man and the tender sympathy of a wonderful woman.

Undoubtedly at a word of entreaty either Gerald Strowbridge or Mrs. McDonald would have come with her, but she had realised, and they had concurred in, the thought that, unattended in her interview with the Governor, she would bring the added appeal of her youth and loneliness. It was fortunate for Muriel that her strange venture into the world had led her to America, where woman's place is so much higher, and where she is so much more chivalrously treated, than in Europe. Respect, kindly interest, and a desire to help her in every way possible were manifested on every hand, in hotels, trains, stores, and even about the

streets of a strange city. She realised it was not her youth or her beauty alone that won her this courtesy, for she saw older and even shabbily dressed women receive the same gallant care, and she could not but contrast it with the surly unconcern of the lower and middle-class English and the gruff coarseness of some other lands. Truly if the men of this new land were its kings, they had placed the queen on a little higher elevation of the throne, and where she was concerned they were ready to be her proud knights and dutiful subjects. But there are men and men, as Muriel was soon to learn, for unfortunately the Governor, who for the time being held the power of life and death in his hands, was of the type that, while lifting the hat with formal courtesy and stepping eagerly to open a door and show all outward signs of respect, denies to woman the homage of the heart and thinks of her brain as of inferior mould, to be discredited and sneered at in secret, whenever she dared raise a personal opinion against his own.

There is no more difficult species of the genus homo for a woman to deal with than the one who meets her with patronising suavity, listens tolerantly to her arguments, and then dismisses them as utterly unworthy of the judicial consideration

of his august intellect. This man whom she was to meet, moreover, had beneath his outer seeming a heart selfish, narrow, and cankered with ignoble ambition. Those who knew him best, and should have been his nearest and dearest, had learned that pity, tenderness, or kindness were unknown to his self-assertive and arrogant nature. Muriel, however, when she sent in her request for an interview, accompanied by the letters of introduction from her friends, had no idea of the character of the one to whom she came as suppliant.

As she sat in the outer office, her heart beat until it nearly suffocated her, and her throat and lips became parched with nervousness.

In a few moments she was ushered into a great room, at one side of which and very far away from her she could see the Governor at his desk, talking with a group of men. Taking her seat near a window that she might have the relief of a breath of air, she studied her surroundings. Beneath her feet, a thick, red carpet; at the great windows, crimson velvet curtains; on the walls, portraits of former governors; and from the painted ceiling massive and ornate chandeliers depended threateningly. As her eyes travelled from object to object, they were always drawn back to the one point in the distance where that group of men sat arguing,