Читать книгу The 13th District. A Story of a Candidate онлайн

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“Why—Jerome!” the girl raised her face, half frightened, “what do you——”

“Tell me,” he demanded, and he fairly shook her, “how do you know?”

She raised her face, and he saw that it was moistened with tears. She withdrew from his embrace, and sat erect. He let his arms fall to his side. Then she took his face in her two hands, she looked into his eyes, and she gave a scornful little laugh.

“How do I know?” she said. “Ah, Jerome, because I know you; because I know that you could do nothing dishonorable!”

He hung his head, helpless, and the impulse to tell her passed with the moment that made it impossible.

Late in the evening, when he was going, as he stood below her on the steps of the veranda, she said to him:

“Jerome, do you know what Mr. Rankin did to get those delegations to—swing to you, did you say?”

“Why, no,” he laughed, “why?”

“You are sure there was no—no—money?” She said the word as if she were afraid of it.

“Money!” he exclaimed. “Money!” and he laughed the same laugh of protestation she had laughed a while before, though he laughed the big laugh of a man. “Why, my precious little girl, money would be the last thing in the world with me—I guess it always will be!” he observed in rueful parenthesis. “Don’t you believe me when I tell you that my law practice, and God knows it was small enough as it was, has gone to pieces in this campaign, that I’m insolvent, that I’m a pauper, that I’d have to be buried in the potter’s field if I were to die to-night?”