Senator North | Page 6

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 about to be re-born?" she thought. "Or merely rejuvenated? I certainly do feel young again."
She looked about critically as she entered the house. Her own home, which was older than the White House, was large and plain, with lofty rooms severely trimmed in the colonial style. There were no portieres, no modern devices of decoration. Everything was solid and comfortable, worn, and of a long and honourable descent. The dining-room and large square hall were striking