How dared he pretend that he had placed her under an obligation! As if it made any difference to her whether her father were Governor or not! As she fled upward she heard Gershom follow Vetch into the library, and she knew that they would sit talking there until long after midnight.
These discussions had become frequent of late; and she surmised vaguely, though Vetch never mentioned Gershom's name to her, that the two men were no longer upon the friendly terms of the old days.

Ever since Vetch's election, it had seemed to her that the pack of hungry politicians had closed in about him; and only the day before, when she had gone over to the Governor's office in the Capitol building, she had run away from what she merrily described as "the famished wolves" waiting outside his door.

It was clear even to her that the political leaders who had supported Vetch were beginning already to distrust him.
They had sought, she realized, to use his popularity, his eloquence, his earnestness, for their own ends; and they were making the historic discovery that the man who possesses these affirmative qualities is seldom without the will to preserve them.

In their superficial ploughing of the soil, Vetch's adherents had at last struck against the rock of resistance.

A man of ambition, or a man of prejudice, they might have controlled; but, as Patty had learned long ago, Vetch was that most difficult of political problems--the man of an idea.
Sitting before her dressing-table she glanced over the room, which was hung with the gaily decorated chintz she had bought after months of secret longing for roses and hollyhocks in her bedroom.