here was no good in her.
Yet it could not be denied that Victoria was amusing, and had a sort of
irregular fascination; consequently she was universally tolerated. To
see Mrs. Lee thrust down to her own level was an unmixed pleasure to
her, and she carefully repeated to Madeleine the choice bits of dialogue
which she picked up in her wanderings.

"Your cousin, Mrs. Clinton, says you are a ca-ca-cat, Mrs. Lee."

"I don't believe it, Victoria. Mrs. Clinton never said anything of the
sort."

"Mrs. Marston says it is because you have caught a ra-ra-rat, and
Senator Clinton was only a m-m-mouse!"

Naturally all this unexpected publicity irritated Mrs. Lee not a little,
especially when short and vague paragraphs, soon followed by longer
and more positive ones, in regard to Senator Ratcliffe's matrimonial
prospects, began to appear in newspapers, along with descriptions of
herself from the pens of enterprising female correspondents for the
press, who had never so much as seen her. At the first sight of one of
these newspaper articles, Madeleine fairly cried with mortification and
anger. She wanted to leave Washington the next day, and she hated the
very thought of Ratcliffe. There was something in the newspaper style so
inscrutably vulgar, something so inexplicably revolting to the sense of
feminine decency, that she shrank under it as though it were a poisonous
spider. But after the first acute shame had passed, her temper was
roused, and she vowed that she would pursue her own path just as she
had begun, without regard to all the malignity and vulgarity in the wide
United States. She did not care to marry Senator Ratcliffe; she liked
his society and was flattered by his confidence; she rather hoped to
prevent him from ever making a formal offer, and if not, she would at
least push it off to the last possible moment; but she was not to be
frightened from marrying him by any amount of spitefulness or gossip,
and she did not mean to refuse him except for stronger reasons than
these. She even went so far in her desperate courage as to laugh at her
cousin, Mrs.

Clinton, whose venerable husband she allowed and even encouraged to pay
her such public attention and to express sentiments of such youthful
ardour as she well knew would inflame and exasperate the excellent lady
his wife.

Carrington was the person most unpleasantly affected by the course which
this affair had taken. He could no longer conceal from himself the fac