Detractors, of course, he had--as which of
those who raise their heads above the dead level have not?--but they
usually contented themselves with saying, as Buck Klinker had once said,
that his manners were a little too good to be true. To most he seemed a
fine type of the young American of the modern South; a brave gentleman;
a true Democrat with all his honors; and, though he had not yet been
tested in any position of responsibility, a rising man who held the
future in his hand.
They took their seats, and at last he freed himself from the unsteadying
embarrassment which had shaken him at the first sight of her under the
brilliant lights of the ballroom.
"Two things have happened to make this seventh of March a memorable day
for me," said he. "Two great honors have come to me. They are both for
your ear alone."
She flung upon him the masked battery of her eyes. They were
extraordinary eyes, gray and emerald, not large, but singularly long. He
looked fully into them, and she slowly smiled.
"The other honor," said Charles Gardiner West, "is of a commoner kind.
They want to make me president of Blaines College.
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