n politics he always failed in the end, for
he recognized no principles at all. In business he was active, resolute,
and seldom deceived; in politics he was equally active, but was apt to
be irresolute, and was deceived every day of his life. In both cases
it was not so much from love of power that he labored, as from the
excitement of the game. The larger the scale the better he liked it; a
large railroad operation, a large tract of real estate, a big and noisy
statesman,--these investments he found irresistible.

On which of his two sets of principles he would manage a wife remained
to be proved. It is the misfortune of what are called self-made men
in America, that, though early accustomed to the society of men of the
world, they often remain utterly unacquainted with women of the world,
until those charming perils are at last sprung upon them in full force,
at New York or Washington. John Lambert at forty was as absolutely
ignorant of the qualities and habits of a cultivated woman as of the
details of her toilet. The plain domesticity of his departed wife he had
understood and prized; he remembered her household ways as he did her
black alpaca dress; indeed, except for that item of apparel, she was not
so unlike himself. In later years he had seen the women of society;
he had heard them talk; he had heard men talk about them, wittily or
wickedly, at the clubs; he had perceived that a good many of them wished
to marry him, and yet, after all, he knew no more of them than of the
rearing of humming-birds or orchids,--dainty, tropical things which he
allowed his gardener to raise, he keeping his hands off, and only paying
the bills. Whether there was in existence a class of women who were both
useful and refined,--any intermediate type between the butterfly and the
drudge,--was a question which he had sometimes asked himself, without
having the materials to construct a reply.

With imagination thus touched and heart unfilled, this man had been
bewitched from the very first moment by Emilia. He kept it to himself,
and heard in silence the criticisms made at the club-windows. To those
perpetual jokes about marriage, which are showered with such graceful
courtesy about the path of widowers, he had no reply; or at most
would only admit that he needed some elegant woman to preside over his
establishment, and that he had better take her young, as having habits
less fixed. But in his secret soul he treasured every tone of this