ajorities in every case
were small. Consequently the more complete victory of Lyons was a
feather in his cap, and materially enhanced his political standing.

The sudden death of Mr. Parsons within a week of the election saved
Selma's conscience from the strain of arranging a harmonious and
equitable separation from him. She had felt that the enlargement of her
sphere of life and the opportunity to serve her country which this
marriage offered were paramount to any other considerations, but she was
duly conscious that Mr. Parsons would miss her sorely, and she was
considering the feasibility of substituting Miss Bailey as his companion
in her place, when fate supplied a different solution. Selma had pledged
her friends to secrecy, so that Mr. Parsons need know nothing until the
plans for his happiness had been perfected, and he died in ignorance of
the interesting matrimonial alliance which had been fostered under his
roof. By the terms of his will Selma was bequeathed the twenty thousand
dollars he had promised her. She and Mr. Lyons, with a third person, to
be selected by them, were appointed trustees of the Free Hospital with
which he had endowed Benham, and Mr. Lyons was nominated as the sole
executor under the will.

Selma's conception that her third betrothal was coincident with
spiritual development, and that she had fought her way through hampering
circumstances to a higher plane of experience, had taken firm hold of
her imagination. She presently confessed to Lyons that she had not
hitherto appreciated the full meaning of the dogma that marriage was a
sacrament. She evinced a disposition to show herself with him at church
gatherings, and to cultivate the acquaintance of his pastor. She felt
that she had finally secured the opportunity to live the sober, simple
life appropriate to those who believed in maintaining American
principles, and in eschewing luxurious and effete foreign innovations;
the sort of life she had always meant to live, and from which she had
been debarred. She had now not only opportunity, but a responsibility.
As the bride of a Congressman, it behooved her both to pursue virtue for
its own sake and for the sake of example. It was incumbent on her to
preserve and promote democratic conditions in signal opposition to
so-called fashionable society, and at the same time to assert her own
proper dignity and the dignity of her constituents by a suitable outward
show.

This last subtlety of refl