n she had paused. "It is very kind of you," I added.

"I do not mean it for kindness, Mr. Starr. My niece is very dear to me;
and since poor Sarah's unfortunate experience, we have felt
more--strongly, if possible, about unequal marriages. I know that you
are a most remarkable young man, but I do not feel that you are in any
way suited to make the happiness of our niece--Miss Mickleborough--"

"I am sorry, Miss Matoaca, but Miss Mickleborough thinks differently."

"Young people are rarely the best judges in such matters, Mr. Starr."

"But do you think their elders can judge for them?"

"If they have had experience--yes."

"Ah, Miss Matoaca, does our own experience ever teach us to understand
the experience of others?"

"The Blands have never needed to be taught," she returned with pride,
"that the claims of the family are not to be sacrificed to--to a
sentiment. Except in the case of poor Sarah there has never been a
mesalliance in our history. We have always put one thing above the
consideration of our blood, and that is--a principle. If it were a
question of conscience, however painful it might be to me, I should
uphold my niece in her opposition to my sister Mitty. I myself have
opposed her for a matter of principle."

"I am aware of it, Miss Matoaca."

Her withered cheeks were tinged with a delicate rose, and I could almost
see the working of her long, narrow mind behind her long, narrow face.

"I should like to leave a few of these leaflets with you, Mr. Starr,"
she said.

A minute afterwards, when she had moved on with her meek, slow walk, I
was left standing on the pavement with her suffrage pamphlets fluttering
in my hand. Stuffing them hurriedly into my pocket, I went on to the
office, utterly oblivious of the existence of any principle on earth
except the one underlying the immediate expansion of the Great South
Midland and Atlantic Railroad.

A fortnight later I heard that Miss Matoaca had begun writing letters to
the "Richmond Herald"; and I remembered, with an easy masculine
complacency, the pamphlets I had thrown into the waste basket beside the
General's desk. The presidential election, with its usual upheaval of
the business world, had arrived; and that timid little Miss Matoaca
should have intruded herself into the affairs of the nation did not
occur to me as possible, until the General informed me, while we watched
a Democratic procession one afternoon, that Miss Mitty had come to him
the