main body of his party, and he carried several Indiana counties in
his pocket. His relations with Bassett had never been in the least
intimate, though always outwardly cordial, and there were those who
looked to him to eliminate the Fraser County chief from politics. He was
quite as rich as Bassett, and a successful lawyer, who had become a
colonel by grace of a staff appointment in the Spanish War. He had a
weakness for the poets, and his speeches were informed with that grace
and sentiment which, we are fond of saying, is peculiar to Southern
oratory. The Colonel, at all fitting occasions in our commonwealth,
responded to "the ladies" in tender and moving phrases. He was a
bachelor, and the ladies in the gallery saw in him their true champion.

"Please tell _us_--we don't understand a bit of it," pleaded
Marian--"what it's all about, Colonel Ramsay."

"Oh, it's just a little joke of your father's; nothing funnier ever
happened in a state convention." Colonel Ramsay grinned. "The key to the
situation is right there: that Pulaski County delegate offered his
resolution just to make trouble; it was a fake resolution. Of course the
chairman is in the joke. This young fellow down here--yes, Harwood--made
his speech to add to the gayety of nations. He had no right to make it,
of course, but the word had been passed along the line to let him go
through. Amazing vocal powers, that boy,--you couldn't have stopped
him!"

Sylvia was aware that Colonel Ramsay's explanation had not pleased Mrs.
Bassett; but Mrs. Owen evinced no feeling. Marian was enjoying Colonel
Ramsay's praise of her father's adroitness. Near Sylvia were other women
who had much at stake in the result of the convention. The wife of a
candidate for secretary of state had invited herself to a seat beside
Mrs. Bassett; the wife of a Congressman who wished to be governor, sat
near, publishing to the world her intimate acquaintance with Morton
Bassett's family. The appearance and conduct of these women during the
day interested Sylvia almost as much as the incidents occurring on the
floor; it was a new idea that politics had a bearing upon the domestic
life of the men who engaged in the eternal contest for place and power.
The convention as a spectacle was immensely diverting, but she had her
misgivings about it as a transaction in history. Colonel Ramsay asked
her politics and she confessed that she had none. She had inherited
Republican prejudices from her grandf