to control his temper, he would have done very well, but his
temper was under a great strain in these times, and his incessant effort
to control it in politics made him less watchful in private life.
Mrs. Lee's tacit assumption of superior refinement irritated him,
and sometimes made him show his teeth like a bull-dog, at the cost of
receiving from Mrs. Lee a quick stroke in return such as a well-bred
tortoise-shell cat administers to check over-familiarity; innocent to
the eye, but drawing blood. One evening when he was more than commonly
out of sorts, after sitting some time in moody silence, he roused
himself, and, taking up a book that lay on her table, he glanced at its
title and turned over the leaves. It happened by ill luck to be a volume
of Darwin that Mrs. Lee had just borrowed from the library of Congress.

"Do you understand this sort of thing?" asked the Senator abruptly, in a
tone that suggested a sneer.

"Not very well," replied Mrs. Lee, rather curtly.

"Why do you want to understand it?" persisted the Senator. "What good
will it do you?"

"Perhaps it will teach us to be modest," answered Madeleine, quite equal
to the occasion.

"Because it says we descend from monkeys?" rejoined the Senator,
roughly.

"Do you think you are descended from monkeys?"

"Why not?" said Madeleine.

"Why not?" repeated Ratcliffe, laughing harshly. "I don't like the
connection. Do you mean to introduce your distant relations into
society?"

"They would bring more amusement into it than most of its present
members," rejoined Mrs. Lee, with a gentle smile that threatened
mischief. But Ratcliffe would not be warned; on the contrary, the only
effect of Mrs. Lee's defiance was to exasperate his ill-temper, and
whenever he lost his temper he became senatorial and Websterian. "Such
books," he began, "disgrace our civilization; they degrade and stultify
our divine nature; they are only suited for Asiatic despotisms where men
are reduced to the level of brutes; that they should be accepted by a
man like Baron Jacobi, I can understand; he and his masters have nothing
to do in the world but to trample on human rights. Mr. Carrington, of
course, would approve those ideas; he believes in the divine doctrine
of flogging negroes; but that you, who profess philanthropy and free
principles, should go with them, is astonishing; it is incredible; it is
unworthy of you."

"You are very hard on the monkeys," replied Madeleine, rather s