ide their path. It was his way
of bringing his own qualities into relief. He meant that she should go
hand in hand with him through the brimstone lake, and the more repulsive
it seemed to her, the more overwhelming would his superiority become. He
meant to destroy those doubts of his character which Carrington was so
carefully fostering, to rouse her sympathy, to stimulate her feminine
sense of self-sacrifice.

When he asked this question she looked up at him with an expression of
indignant pride, as she spoke:

"I say again, Mr. Ratcliffe, what I said once before. Do whatever is
most for the public good."

"And what is most for the public good?"

Madeleine half opened her mouth to reply, then hesitated, and stared
silently into the fire before her. What was indeed most for the public
good?

Where did the public good enter at all into this maze of personal
intrigue, this wilderness of stunted natures where no straight road
was to be found, but only the tortuous and aimless tracks of beasts and
things that crawl?

Where was she to look for a principle to guide, an ideal to set up and
to point at?

Ratcliffe resumed his appeal, and his manner was more serious than ever.

"I am hard pressed, Mrs. Lee. My enemies encompass me about. They mean
to ruin me. I honestly wish to do my duty. You once said that personal
considerations should have no weight. Very well! throw them away! And
now tell me what I should do."

For the first time, Mrs. Lee began to feel his power. He was simple,
straightforward, earnest. His words moved her. How should she imagine
that he was playing upon her sensitive nature precisely as he played
upon the President's coarse one, and that this heavy western politician
had the instincts of a wild Indian in their sharpness and quickness of
perception; that he divined her character and read it as he read the
faces and tones of thousands from day to day? She was uneasy under his
eye. She began a sentence, hesitated in the middle, and broke down. She
lost her command of thought, and sat dumb-founded. He had to draw her
out of the confusion he had himself made.

"I see your meaning in your face. You say that I should accept the duty
and disregard the consequences."

"I don't know," said Madeleine, hesitatingly; "Yes, I think that would
be my feeling."

"And when I fall a sacrifice to that man's envy and intrigue, what will
you think then, Mrs. Lee? Will you not join the rest of the world and
sa