ll declared emphatically
that it must be a Southerner. Not since the war had a prominent
Southerner represented America at a first-class foreign court; it was
shameful; the time was ripe for change. But who? Here opinions differed
widely. Nearly every one mentioned a candidate, and those who did not
seemed to refrain from motives of personal modesty.

Mary Cresswell sped her departing guests with a distinct purpose in
mind. She must make herself leader of the Southern set in Washington and
concentrate its whole force on the appointment of Harry Cresswell as
ambassador to France. Quick reward and promotion were essential to
Harry's success. He was not one to keep up the strain of effort a long
time. Unless, then, tangible results came and came quickly, he was
liable to relapse into old habits. Therefore he must succeed and succeed
at once. She would have preferred a less ornamental position than the
ambassadorship, but there were no other openings. The Alabama senators
were firmly seated for at least four years and the Governorship had been
carefully arranged for. A term of four years abroad, however, might
bring Harry Cresswell back in time for greater advancement. At any rate,
it was the only tangible offering, and Mary Cresswell silently
determined to work for it.

Here it was that she made her mistake. It was one thing for her to be a
tactful hostess, pleasing her husband and his guests; it was another for
her to aim openly at social leadership and political influence. She had
at first all the insignia of success. Her dinners became of real
political significance and her husband figured more and more as a
leading Southerner. The result was two-fold. Cresswell, on the one hand,
with his usual selfishness, took his rising popularity as a matter of
course and as the fruits of his own work; he was rising, he was making
valuable speeches, he was becoming a social power, and his only handicap
was his plain and over-ambitious wife. But on the other hand Mrs.
Cresswell forgot two pitfalls: the cleft between the old Southern
aristocracy and the pushing new Southerners; and above all, her own
Northern birth and presumably pro-Negro sympathies.

What Mrs. Cresswell forgot Mrs. Vanderpool sensed unerringly. She had
heard with uneasiness of Cresswell's renewed candidacy for the Paris
ambassadorship, and she set herself to block it. She had worked hard.
The President stood ready to send her husband's appointment again to the
Se