Now I must go, for I have visits to
make. The next time I come, Mr. Ratcliffe, you must keep your word
better."

When they next met, Ratcliffe read to her a part of his reply to Mr.
Grimes, which ran thus: "It is the lot of every party leader to suffer
from attacks and to commit errors. It is true, as the President says,
that I have been no exception to this law. Believing as I do that great
results can only be accomplished by great parties, I have uniformly
yielded my own personal opinions where they have failed to obtain
general assent. I shall continue to follow this course, and the
President may with perfect confidence count upon my disinterested
support of all party measures, even though I may not be consulted in
originating them."

Mrs. Lee listened attentively, and then said: "Have you never refused to
go with your party?"

"Never!" was Ratcliffe's firm reply.

Madeleine still more thoughtfully inquired again: "Is nothing more
powerful than party allegiance?"

"Nothing, except national allegiance," replied Ratcliffe, still more
firmly.

Chapter V

TO tie a prominent statesman to her train and to lead him about like a
tame bear, is for a young and vivacious woman a more certain amusement
than to tie herself to him and to be dragged about like an Indian
squaw. This fact was Madeleine Lee's first great political discovery in
Washington, and it was worth to her all the German philosophy she had
ever read, with even a complete edition of Herbert Spencer's works into
the bargain. There could be no doubt that the honours and dignities of
a public career were no fair consideration for its pains. She made a
little daily task for herself of reading in succession the lives and
letters of the American Presidents, and of their wives, when she could
find that there was a trace of the latter's existence. What a melancholy
spectacle it was, from George Washington down to the last incumbent;
what vexations, what disappointments, what grievous mistakes, what very
objectionable manners! Not one of them, who had aimed at high purpose,
but had been thwarted, beaten, and habitually insulted! What a gloom lay
on the features of those famous chieftains, Calhoun, Clay, and Webster;
what varied expression of defeat and unsatisfied desire; what a sense
of self-importance and senatorial magniloquence; what a craving for
flattery; what despair at the sentence of fate! And what did they amount
to, after all?

They were practi