The Governors | Page 5

that you do not," she answered.
"You will know me better, I hope, in a year or so's time," he said. "If
you wish to please me, there are two things which you have to
remember, and which I expect from you. One is absolute, implicit
obedience, the other is absolute, unvarying truth. You will never, I
think, have cause to complain of me, if you remember those two
things."
"I will try," she murmured.
Her thoughts suddenly flitted back to the poor little home from which
she had come with such high hopes. She thought of the excitement

which had followed the coming of her uncle's letter; the hopes that her
harassed, overworked father had built upon it; the sudden, almost
trembling joy which had come into her mother's thin, faded face. Her
first taste of luxury suddenly brought before her eyes, stripped bare of
everything except its pitiful cruelty, that ceaseless struggle for life in
which it seemed to her that all of them had been engaged, year after
year. She shivered a little as she thought of them, shivered for fear she
should fail now that the chance had come of some day being able to
help them. Absolute obedience, absolute truth! If these two things were
all, she could hold on, she was sure of it.
A messenger boy was brought in, and delivered a letter to her uncle. He
read and destroyed it at once.
"There is no answer," he said.
The messenger protested.
"I am to wait, sir, until you give me one," he said. "The gentleman said
it was most important. I was to find you anywhere, anyhow, and get an
answer of some sort."
"How much," Mr. Phineas Duge asked, "were you to receive if you
took back an answer?"
"The gentleman promised me a dollar, sir," the boy answered.
Mr. Duge put his hand into his pocket.
"Here are two dollars," he said. "Go away at once. There is no answer.
There will not be one. You can tell Mr. Hamilton that I said so."
The boy departed. Her uncle looked across at Virginia and smiled.
"That is how we have to buy immunity from small annoyances here,"
he said. "All the time it is the same thing--dollars, dollars, dollars! That
messenger boy was clever to get in. When we leave this restaurant, you
will find that there are at least half a dozen people waiting to speak to
me. It will be telephoned to several places in the city that I am dining

here to-night. From where I am sitting, I can see two reporters standing
by the entrance. They are waiting for me."
She looked at him with interested eyes.
"But why?" she asked timidly.
"Oh! it is simply a matter," he said, "of the money-markets. I have been
doing some things during the last few days which people don't quite
understand. They don't know whether to follow me or stand away, and
the Press doesn't know how to explain my actions; so you see I am
watched. You heard what I said," he asked, somewhat abruptly, "about
those two things, obedience and truth?"
"Yes!" she answered.
"They say," he resumed, "that a wise man trusts no one. I, on the other
hand, do not believe this. There are times when one must trust. Your
mother and your father were both as honest as people could be,
whatever their other faults may have been. I like your face. I believe
that you, too, are honest."
"Remember," she said, smiling, "that I have never been tempted."
"There could be no bidders for your faithfulness," he answered, "whom
I could not outbid. I am going to trust you, Virginia. There are
sometimes occasions when I do things, or am concerned in matters,
which not even my secretaries have any idea of. You only, in the future,
will know. I think, dear, that we shall get on very well together. I am
not going to offer you a great deal of money, because you would not
know what to do with it, but so long as you remain with me, and serve
me in the way that I direct, I am going to do what I feel I ought to have
done long ago for your people down at Wellham Springs."
Her face shone, and her beautiful eyes were more brilliant still with
unshed tears.
"Uncle!" she murmured breathlessly.

He nodded.
"That will do," he said. "I only wanted you to understand. For the next
week or two, all that you have to do is to get used to your position. The
small services which I shall require of you will commence later on.
Now try some of that ice. It has been prepared specially. How do you
like our New York cooking?"
"It is