e I kept.

Mr. Williams was a prospering lawyer and land speculator. He had been in
Chicago for two years. His household consisted of Mrs. Williams and two
children, and a Miss Walker from Connecticut, a sister of Mrs. Williams.
The house was new and of some architectural pretentions, of brick, in
the style of the houses I had seen in New York. It was well furnished.
There were two servants; altogether an air of elegance about the
establishment.

We had a gay hour at breakfast, for Douglas was in one of his most
engaging and talkative moods. Mr. Williams was a man in the middle
forties, and seemed colorless and unschooled in comparison with Douglas.
He shared Douglas' political opinions, looked upon him with a certain
awe; while Mrs. Williams and the children kept a reverential silence.

But Miss Walker! I saw that she was disposed to match wits with Douglas.
She was exceedingly fair of complexion, with lovely brown hair and
gray-blue eyes, which had a way of fixing themselves in an expression of
intense concentration. Like sudden spurts of flame they lighted quickly
upon the barely suggested point of a story or an argument. She laughed
freely in a musical voice that encouraged Douglas to multiply anecdotes.
Douglas enjoyed this admiration. But after all his attitude toward women
was wholly conventional. He did not use his gifts to win them. The idea
of making conquests, even through his growing celebrity, did not enter
into his speculations. He was a man's man. If he was ever to be
interested in a woman it would be in the practical way of making her his
wife. He could be a husband, never a lover. His genius, though fed by
passion and virility, entertained no visions of romantic ecstasy. His
instinct was for the laws.

Miss Walker was to Douglas only a delightful auditor, an apt
interlocutor. She looked Douglas through and through. She dropped words
of dissent. She expressed her abhorrence of slavery and the South. In
referring to South Carolina's attempted nullification of the tariff law,
she said that if they ever attempted to secede they should be pushed
out of the door and not held. I thought her critical of Douglas, in
spite of the amazement which her eyes betrayed for his conversational
gifts, his self-assurance and brilliancy. Once she said that there was a
right and wrong about everything. And when Douglas glanced up at her
quickly, her eyes fixed him steadily. Douglas took up this challenge by
saying: "Yes,