smiled like an elder sister, and held out her hand in loving
friendship.

From the day of the revolution, the three names which forever belong to
the history of British Republicanism were in the front--O'Donovan
Rourke, the first President, and his two famous Ministers, Jonathan
Simms and Richard Lincoln.

But the story of that first great Administration is read now in the
school-books. The sudden death of the President was the first serious
loss of the Republic. Had he lived another decade how different would
have been the later history of England!

Matthew Gower, the Vice-President, entered on the unexpired term of the
Presidency. He was a weak, well-meaning man, and he was jealous of the
extraordinary popularity and personal influence of Richard Lincoln, the
Secretary of State. When his cabinet was announced, Richard Lincoln,
released from his long service in harness, with a deep feeling of
relief, went back to his home in Nottingham.

At this time he was forty-six years of age. He had been a widower for
over twenty years. At twenty-five he had married the beautiful girl he
loved, and within the year his wife died, leaving the lonely man a
little daughter whose eyes renewed his grief and love.

This was the tall girl who flung her arms round the neck of the
dismissed minister when he entered his home at Nottingham.

"No one else, papa!" she cried, as she buried her face against his
heart, sobbing with joy. "Do not speak to any one else till I am done
with you."

The rest, the love, the peace of home were very sweet. Richard Lincoln
renewed, or tried to renew, his interest in the work of his younger
days. His daughter loved to go with him through the town, proud of the
famous man who was hers, heedful of any curious or respectful glance of
the people on the street.

He gave himself up to the new life. He began to wonder at and enjoy the
beauty, accomplishments and unceasing amiability of his daughter.

Mary Lincoln was a rare type of womanhood. She had inherited her
mother's grace and lithe beauty of form, and from her father she took a
strong and self-sustained nature. But there was added a quality that was
hers alone--a strange, silent power of enthusiasm--a fervor that did not
cry out for ideals, but filled all her blood with a deep music of
devotion. A man with such a nature had been a poet or the founder of a
creed. But the ideal of a man is an idea, while the ideal of a woman is
a man. Time alone can