it suddenly resting on her own shoulders.
When she spoke with indignation of the wholesale removals from office
with which the new administration marked its advent to power, he told
her the story of the President's fundamental principle, and asked her
what she would have him do. "He meant to tie my hands," said Ratcliffe,
"and to leave his own free, and I accepted the condition. Can I resign
now on such a ground as this?" And Madeleine was obliged to agree that
he could not. She had no means of knowing how many removals he made in
his own interest, or how far he had outwitted the President at his own
game. He stood before her a victim and a patriot. Every step he had
taken had been taken with her approval. He was now in office to prevent
what evil he could, not to be responsible for the evil that was done;
and he honestly assured her that much worse men would come in when he
went out, as the President would certainly take good care that he did go
out when the moment arrived.

Mrs. Lee had the chance now to carry out her scheme in coming to
Washington, for she was already deep in the mire of politics and
could see with every advantage how the great machine floundered about,
bespattering with mud even her own pure garments. Ratcliffe himself,
since entering the Treasury, had begun to talk with a sneer of the way
in which laws were made, and openly said that he wondered how government
got on at all. Yet he declared still that this particular government was
the highest expression of political thought. Mrs. Lee stared at him and
wondered whether he knew what thought was. To her the government seemed
to have less thought in it than one of Sybil's gowns, for if they, like
the government, were monstrously costly, they were at least adapted to
their purpose, the parts fitted together, and they were neither awkward
nor unwieldy.

There was nothing very encouraging in all this, but it was better than
New York. At least it gave her something to look at, and to think about.
Even Lord Dunbeg preached practical philanthropy to her by the hour.
Ratcliffe, too, was compelled to drag himself out of the rut of machine
politics, and to justify his right of admission to her house. There Mr.
French discoursed at great length, until the fourth of March sent him
home to Connecticut; and he brought more than one intelligent member
of Congress to Mrs. Lee's parlour. Underneath the scum floating on the
surface of politics, Madeleine felt that th