the ground:

"I am not one of those who are happy in political life. I am a
politician because I cannot help myself; it is the trade I am fittest
for, and ambition is my resource to make it tolerable. In politics we
cannot keep our hands clean. I have done many things in my political
career that are not defensible. To act with entire honesty and
self-respect, one should always live in a pure atmosphere, and the
atmosphere of politics is impure. Domestic life is the salvation of many
public men, but I have for many years been deprived of it. I have now
come to that point where increasing responsibilities and temptations
make me require help. I must have it. You alone can give it to me. You
are kind, thoughtful, conscientious, high-minded, cultivated, fitted
better than any woman I ever saw, for public duties. Your place is
there. You belong among those who exercise an influence beyond their
time. I only ask you to take the place which is yours."

This desperate appeal to Mrs. Lee's ambition was a calculated part of
Ratcliffe's scheme. He was well aware that he had marked high game, and
that in proportion to this height must be the power of his lure. Nor was
he embarrassed because Mrs. Lee sat still and pale with her eyes fixed
on the ground and her hands twisted together in her lap. The eagle
that soars highest must be longer in descending to the ground than the
sparrow or the partridge. Mrs. Lee had a thousand things to think about
in this brief time, and yet she found that she could not think at all;
a succession of mere images and fragments of thought passed rapidly over
her mind, and her will exercised no control upon their order or their
nature. One of these fleeting reflections was that in all the offers
of marriage she had ever heard, this was the most unsentimental and
businesslike. As for his appeal to her ambition, it fell quite dead
upon her ear, but a woman must be more than a heroine who can listen to
flattery so evidently sincere, from a man who is pre-eminent among
men, without being affected by it. To her, however, the great and
overpowering fact was that she found herself unable to retreat or
escape; her tactics were disconcerted, her temporary barriers beaten
down.

The offer was made. What should she do with it?

She had thought for months on this subject without being able to form a
decision; what hope was there that she should be able to decide now, in
a ball-room, at a minute's notice? When, as