a State constabulary bill and had asked State Senator
Bissell to father it. He had suggested to the senator that, in the legal
points involved in the bill, his brother-in-law would undoubtedly be
charmed to advise him. So that morning, to talk it over, Bissell had
come from Albany and, as he was forced to return the same afternoon, had
asked Wharton to lunch with him up-town near the station.

That in public life there breathed a man with soul so dead who, were he
offered a chance to serve Hamilton Cutler, would not jump at the chance
was outside the experience of the county chairman. And in so judging his
fellow men, with the exception of one man, the senator was right. The
one man was Hamilton Cutler's brother-in-law. In the national affairs
of his party Hamilton Cutler was one of the four leaders. In two
cabinets he had held office. At a foreign court as an ambassador his
dinners, of which the diplomatic corps still spoke with emotion, had
upheld the dignity of ninety million Americans. He was rich. The history
of his family was the history of the State. When the Albany boats drew
abreast of the old Cutler mansion on the east bank of the Hudson the
passengers pointed at it with deference. Even when the search-lights
pointed at it, it was with deference. And on Fifth Avenue, as the
"Seeing New York" car passed his town house it slowed respectfully to
half speed. When, apparently for no other reason than that she was good
and beautiful, he had married the sister of a then unknown up-State
lawyer, every one felt Hamilton Cutler had made his first mistake. But,
like everything else into which he entered, for him matrimony also was a
success. The prettiest girl in Utica showed herself worthy of her
distinguished husband. She had given him children as beautiful as
herself; as what Washington calls "a cabinet lady" she had kept her name
out of the newspapers; as Madame l'Ambassatrice she had put
archduchesses at their ease; and after ten years she was an adoring
wife, a devoted mother, and a proud woman. Her pride was in believing
that for every joy she knew she was indebted entirely to her husband. To
owe everything to him, to feel that through him the blessings flowed,
was her ideal of happiness.

In this ideal her brother did not share. Her delight in a sense of
obligation left him quite cold. No one better than himself knew that his
rapid-fire rise in public favor was due to his own exertions, to the
fact that he had w