"
"I don't think you need worry about him and Margaret. I repeat,
she is sensible--an admirable girl--admirably brought up. She has
distinction. She has the right instincts."
Madam Bowker punctuated each of these compliments with a nod of
her haughty head. "But," said she, "Craig has convinced her that
he will amount to something."
"Ridiculous!" scoffed Branch, with an airy wave of the hand. But
there was in his tone a concealment that set the shrewd old lady
furtively to watching him.
"What do they think of him among the public men?" inquired she.
"He's laughed at there as everywhere."
Her vigilance was rewarded; as Branch said that, malignance
hissed, ever so softly, in his suave voice, and the snake peered
furtively from his calm, cold eyes. Old Madam Bowker had not lived
at Washington's great green tables for the gamblers of ambition
all those years without learning the significance of eyes and
tone. For one politician to speak thus venomously of another was
sure sign that that other was of consequence; for John Branch, a
very Machiavelli at self-concealment and usually too egotistic to
be jealous, thus to speak, and that, without being able to conceal
his venom--"Can it be possible," thought the old lady, "that this
Craig is about to be a somebody?" Aloud she said: "He is a
preposterous creature.
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