He went home quite eager for the fray, and his eagerness was not allowed to flag. The favorite story came to his ears again and again. Men met him in the streets, and stopped to speak of it; others dropped into his rooms to hear the truth from himself, when he went to his hotel to dine; talkers standing in groups in the lobbies turned to look at him, and when he had passed them returned to their conversation with renewed interest. To the first man who referred to the matter he listened until he had said his say. Then he answered him.

"You want to hear the truth about that," he said, "don\'t you?"

"That, of course," was the reply.

"And you want to be able to tell the truth about it when you are asked questions?"

"Most certainly."

"Well, then, the truth is that there isn\'t a word of truth in it from beginning to end; and if you want to tell the truth, say it\'s a lie, and add that I said so, and I am prepared to say so to every man who wants to interview me; and, what is more, every man who tells another that it is a lie does me a favor that gives him a claim on me."

He repeated the same thing in effect each time an opportunity presented itself, and as these opportunities were frequent and each time he gained something of heat and lost something of temper and patience, he was somewhat tired and by no means in the best of humors when he sat down to his dinner, in the big, glaring, crowded hotel dining-room, amid the rattle of knives, forks, and crockery, the rushing to and fro of excited waiters, and[Pg 502] the incoming and outgoing of hungry people. His calmness was not added to by observing that the diners at the tables near him discovered him as with one accord almost as soon as he entered, and cast glances of interest at him between the courses.

"Perfectly dreadful scene, they say," he heard one lady remark, with an unconscious candor born of her confidence that the clatter of dishes would drown all sound. "Went down on her knees to him and wrung her hands, imploring him to have mercy on her. Husband disappeared next day. Quite society people too. She has been a great deal admired."

What further particulars the speaker might have entered into there is no knowing, as she was a communicative person and plainly enjoyed her subject; but just at this juncture the lady to whom she was confiding her knowledge of the topics of the hour uttered an uneasy exclamation.

"Gracious! Maria!" she said. "He has heard you! I am sure he has! He has turned quite red—redder than he was—and he is looking at us! O Maria!" in accents sepulchral with fright, "he is getting up! He is coming to speak to us! O—Mari!"—

He was upon them at that very moment. He was accustomed to public speaking, and his experience led him to the point at once. He held his newspaper half folded in his hand, and, as had been said, he was a trifle redder than usual; but his manner was too direct to be entirely devoid of dignity.

"I beg your pardon," he said, "but my name is Blundel."

The most hopelessly terrified of the ladies found herself saying that he "was very kind," and the one who had told the story gasped faintly, but with an evident desire to propitiate, that she "had heard so."

"I take the liberty of mentioning it," he added, "because I have been sitting quite near to you and chanced to overhear what you were saying, and as you are [Pg 503]evidently laboring under an impression I am interested in correcting, I felt obliged to intrude on you with a view to correcting it. I have been denying that story all day. It isn\'t true. Not a word of it. I never said an unkind word to the lady you mention, and I never had an unkind thought of her. No one has any right to speak ill of her. I am her friend. You will excuse my interrupting you. Here is my card." And he laid the card on the table, made a bow not so remarkable for grace, perhaps, as for perfect respectfulness, and marched back to his table.

There were few people in the room who did not turn to look at him as he sat down again, and nine out of ten began to indulge in highly colored speculations as to why he had addressed the women and who they were. There had never been a more popular scandal than the Westoria land scheme; the magnitude of it, the element of romance connecting itself with it, the social position of the principal schemers, all endeared it to the public heart. Blundel himself had become a hero, and had the rumors regarding his irreproachable and dramatic conduct only been rife at a time of election they would have assured him an overwhelming majority. Perhaps as he approached the strangers\' table there had been a fond, flickering hope cherished that these two apparently harmless women were lobbyists themselves, and that their disguise was to be rent from them, and their iniquities to be proclaimed upon the spot. But the brief episode ended with apparent tameness, and the general temperature was much lowered, the two ladies sinking greatly in public opinion, and the interest in Blundel himself flagging a little. There was one person, however, who did not lose interest in him. This was a little, eager, birdlike woman who sat at some distance from him, at a small table, alone. She h............