e no
conscience; and it is eminently just they should be made to realize that
people who lack conscience cannot prosper in this country in the long
run. 'They have loosed the awful lightnings of his terrible swift
sword.'"

"I say 'amen' to that assuredly, Selma," Lyons answered. His
predilection to palliate equivocal circumstances was never proof against
clear, evidence of moral delinquency. When his religious scruples were
finally offended, he was grave and unrelenting.

The downfall of the Williamses continued to be a sweet solace and source
of encouragement to Selma. It made her, when taken in conjunction with
her own recent progress, feel that the whirligig of time was working in
her behalf after all; and that if she persevered, not merely Flossy, but
all those who worshipped mammon, and consequently failed to recognize
her talents, would be made to bite the dust. At the moment these enemies
seemed to have infested Benham. Numerically speaking, they were
unimportant, but they had established an irritating, irregular skirmish
line, one end of which occupied Wetmore College, another held secret
midnight meetings at Mrs. Hallett Taylor's. Rumors of various
undertakings, educational, semi-political, artistic, or philanthropic,
agitated or directed by this fringe of society, came to her ears from
time to time, but she heard them as an outsider. When she became the
Governor's wife she had said to herself that now these aristocrats would
be compelled to admit her to their counsels. But she found, to her
annoyance, that the election made no difference. Neither Pauline nor
Mrs. Taylor nor any of the coterie had asked her to join them, and she
was unpleasantly conscious that there were people on the River Drive who
showed no more desire to make her acquaintance than when she had been
Mrs. Lewis Babcock. What did this mean? It meant simply--she began to
argue--that she must hold fast to her faith and bide her time. That if
she and her friends kept a bold front and resisted the encroachments of
this pernicious spirit, Providence would interfere presently and
confound these enemies of social truth no less obviously than it had
already overwhelmed Mrs. Gregory Williams. As the wife of the Governor,
she was clearly in a position to maintain this bold front effectively.
Every mail brought to her requests for her support, and the sanction of
her signature to social or charitable enterprises. Her hospital was
flourishing along the