Senator North | Page 6

droop of his
shoulders. The features of both were finely cut, and their complexions
far removed from the reproach of "yellow." They looked like
sun-burned gentlemen.
For nearly ten minutes Betty stared, fascinated, while her mind
grappled with the deep significance of all those two sad and patient
men expressed. They inherited the shell and the intellect, the
aspirations and the possibilities of the gay young planters whose tragic

folly had called into being a race of outcasts with all their own capacity
for shame and suffering.
Betty went home and for twenty-four hours fought with the desire to
champion the cause of the negro and make him her life-work. But not
only did she abominate women with missions; she looked at the subject
upon each of its many sides and asked a number of indirect questions
of her cousin, Jack Emory. Sincere reflection brought with it the
conclusion that her energies in behalf of the negro would be
superfluous. The careless planters were dead; she could not harangue
their dust. The Southerners of the present generation despised and
feared the coloured race in its enfranchised state too actively to have
more to do with it than they could help; if it was a legal offence for
Whites and Blacks to marry, there was an equally stringent social law
which protected the coloured girl from the lust of the white man.
Therefore, as she could not undo the harm already done, and as a
crusade in behalf of the next generation would be meaningless, not to
say indelicate, she dismissed the "problem" from her mind. But the
image of those two sad and stately reflections of the old school sank
indelibly into her memory, and rose to their part in one of the most
momentous decisions of her life.

III

The Montgomerys had come to Washington for the first time at the
beginning of the previous winter, while the Madisons were in England.
Lady Mary had left her note of introduction the day before Betty's
declaration of independence.
Betty was anxious to meet the young Englishwoman, not only because
she possessed the charmed key to political society, but her history as
related by certain gossips of authority commanded interest.
Randolph Montgomery, a young Californian millionaire, had followed
his mother's former ward, Lady Maundrell, to England, nursing an old

and hopeless passion. What passed between him and the beautiful
young countess the gossips did not attempt to state, but he left England
two days after the tragedy which shelved Cecil Maundrell into the
House of Lords, and returned to California accompanied by his mother
and Lady Barnstaple's friend, Lady Mary Montgomery. Bets were
exchanged freely as to the result of this bold move on the part of a girl
too fastidious to marry any of the English parvenus that addressed her,
too poor to marry in her own class. The wedding took place a few
months later, immediately after Mrs. Montgomery's death; an event
which left Lady Mary the guest in a foreign country of a young
bachelor.
From all accounts, the marriage, although a wide deflection from the
highest canons of romance, was a successful one, and the Montgomerys
were living in splendid state in Washington. Lady Mary was approved
by even the "Old Washingtonians"--a thoughtful Californian of lineage
had given her a letter to Miss Carter, who in turn had given her a tea--
and as her husband was brilliant, accomplished, and of the best blood
of Louisiana, the little set, tenaciously clinging to its traditional
exclusiveness amidst the whirling ever-changing particles of the
political maelstrom, found no fault in him beyond his calling. And as
he was a man of tact and never mentioned politics in its presence, and
as his wife was not at home to the public on the first Tuesday of the
month, reserving that day for such of her friends as shunned political
petticoats, the young couple were taken straight into the bosom of that
inner set which the ordinary outsider might search for a very glimpse of
in vain.
How Lady Mary stood with the large and heterogeneous political set
Betty had no means of knowing, and she was curious to ascertain; she
could think of no position more trying for an Englishwoman of Mary
Gifford's class.
As she drove toward the house several hours after announcing her plan
of campaign to her mother, she found Massachusetts Avenue blocked
with carriages and recalled suddenly that Tuesday was
"Representatives' day." She gave a little laugh as she imagined Mrs.

Madison's plaintive distaste. And then she felt the tremor and flutter,
the pleasurable desire to run away, which had assailed her on the night
of her first ball. That was eight years ago, and she had not experienced
a moment of nervous trepidation since.
"Am I