e's lips before she had fairly intended it.
Ratcliffe felt the sting, and it started him from his studied calmness
of manner.

Rising from his chair he stood on the hearthrug before Mrs. Lee, and
broke out upon her with an oration in that old senatorial voice and
style which was least calculated to enlist her sympathies:

"Mrs. Lee," said he, with harsh emphasis and dogmatic tone, "there are
conflicting duties in all the transactions of life, except the simplest.
However we may act, do what we may, we must violate some moral
obligation. All that can be asked of us is that we should guide
ourselves by what we think the highest. At the time this affair
occurred, I was a Senator of the United States. I was also a trusted
member of a great political party which I looked upon as identical with
the nation. In both capacities I owed duties to my constituents, to the
government, to the people. I might interpret these duties narrowly or
broadly. I might say: Perish the government, perish the Union, perish
this people, rather than that I should soil my hands! Or I might say, as
I did, and as I would say again: Be my fate what it may, this glorious
Union, the last hope of suffering humanity, shall be preserved."

Here he paused, and seeing that Mrs. Lee, after looking for a time at
him, was now regarding the fire, lost in meditation over the strange
vagaries of the senatorial mind, he resumed, in another line of
argument. He rightly judged that there must be some moral defect in his
last remarks, although he could not see it, which made persistence in
that direction useless.

"You ought not to blame me--you cannot blame me justly. It is to your
sense of justice I appeal. Have I ever concealed from you my opinions on
this subject? Have I not on the contrary always avowed them? Did I
not here, on this very spot, when challenged once before by this same
Carrington, take credit for an act less defensible than this? Did I not
tell you then that I had even violated the sanctity of a great popular
election and reversed its result? That was my sole act! In comparison
with it, this is a trifle! Who is injured by a steamship company
subscribing one or ten hundred thousand dollars to a campaign fund?
Whose rights are affected by it? Perhaps its stock holders receive one
dollar a share in dividends less than they otherwise would. If they
do not complain, who else can do so? But in that election I deprived a
million people of rights which