Senator North | Page 2

desire. Mrs. Madison, however, kept up the fiction of
an authority which she thought was due to herself and her ancestors.
She continued impatiently,--
"You have been standing before that fireplace for ten minutes with your
shoulders thrown back as if you were going to make a speech. It is not
a nice attitude for a girl at all, and I wish you would sit down. I hope
you don't think that because Sally Carter crosses her knees and
cultivates a brutal frankness of expression you must do the same now
that you have dropped all your friends of your own age and become
intimate with her. I suppose she is old enough to do as she chooses, and
she always was eccentric."
"She is only eight years older than I. You forget that I shall be
twenty-seven in three months."
"Well, that is no reason why you should stand before the fireplace like
a man. Do sit down."
"I'd rather stand here till I've said what is necessary--if you don't mind.
I am sorry to be obliged to say it, and I can assure you that I have not
made up my mind in a moment."
"What is it, for heaven's sake?"
Mrs. Madison drew a short breath and readjusted her cushions. In spite
of her wealth and exalted position she had known much trouble and
grief. Her first six children had died in their early youth. Her husband,
brilliant and charming, had possessed a set of affections too restless and
ardent to confine themselves within the domestic limits. His wife had

buried him with sorrow, but with a deep sigh of relief that for the future
she could mourn him without torment. He had belonged to a collateral
branch of a family of which her father had been the heir; consequently
the old Madison house in Washington was hers, as well as a large
fortune. Harold Madison had been free to spend his own inheritance as
he listed, and he had left but a fragment. Mrs. Madison's nerves, never
strong, had long since given way to trouble and ill-health, and when her
active strong-willed daughter entered her twentieth year, she gladly
permitted her to become the mistress of the household and to think for
both. Betty had been educated by private tutors, then taken abroad for
two years, to France, Germany, and Italy, in order, as she subsequently
observed, to make the foreign attache. Feel more at ease when he
proposed. Her winters thereafter until the last two had been spent in
Washington, where she had been a belle and ranked as a beauty. In the
fashionable set it was believed that every attache, in the city had
proposed to her, as well as a large proportion of the old beaux and of
the youths who pursue the business of Society. Her summers she spent
at her place in the Adirondacks, at Northern watering-places, or in
Europe; and the last two years had been passed, with brief intervals of
Paris and Vienna, in England, where she had been presented with
distinction and seen much of country life. She had returned with her
mother to Washington but a month ago, and since then had spent most
of her time in her room or on horseback, breaking all her engagements
after the first ten days. Mrs. Madison had awaited the explanation with
deep uneasiness. Did her daughter, despite the health manifest in her
splendid young figure, feel the first chill of some mortal disease? She
had not been her gay self for months, and although her complexion was
of that magnolia tint which never harbours colour, it seemed to the
anxious maternal eye, looking back to six young graves, a shade whiter
than it should. Or had she fallen in love with an Englishman, and
hesitated to speak, knowing her mother's love for Washington and bare
tolerance of the British Isles? She looked askance at Betty, who stood
tapping the front of her habit with her crop and evidently waiting for
her mother to express some interest. Mrs. Madison closed her eyes.
Betty therefore continued,--
"I see you are afraid I am going to marry an Oriental minister or

something. I hear that one is looking for an American with a million.
Well, I am going to do something you will think even worse. I am
going in for politics."
"You are going to do what?" Mrs. Madison's voice was nearly
inaudible between relief and horrified surprise, but her eyes flew open.
"Do you mean that you are going to vote?--or run for Congress?--but
women don't sit in Congress, do they?"
"Of course not. Do you know I think it quite shocking that we have
lived here in the very brain of the United States all our lives and know
less of