Now, was he thinking of their future, or was it
some other matter that occupied his real mind while he talked on
and on, usually of himself? She could not tell; she hoped it was,
but she dared not try to find out.
They were at their mail, which one of the guides had just brought.
He interrupted his reading to burst out: "How they do tempt a man!
Now, there's"--and he struck the open letter in his hand with a
flourishing, egotistic gesture--"an offer from the General Steel
Company. They want me as their chief counsel at fifty thousand a
year and the privilege of doing other work that doesn't conflict."
Fifty thousand a year! Margaret discreetly veiled her glistening
eyes.
"It's the fourth offer of the same sort," he went on, "since we've
been up here--since it was given out that I'd be Attorney-General
as soon as old Stillwater retires. The people pay me seventy-five
hundred a year. They take all my time. They make it impossible for
me to do anything outside. They watch and suspect and grumble. And
I could be making my two hundred thousand a year or more."
He was rattling on complacently, patting himself on the back, and,
in his effort to pose as a marvel of patriotic self-sacrifice,
carefully avoiding any suggestion that mere money seemed to him a
very poor thing beside the honor of high office, the direction of
great affairs, the flattering columns of newspaper praise and
censure, the general agitation of eighty millions over him.
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