a Tory I tell you."

"But you are not a Whig?"

"What, an ordinary shop maid!"

"They are true patriots."

"But of no social standing."

"Tell me why all the Mischienza ladies courtesied to me after so courtly
a fashion," he asked.

"They like it. It is part of their life. You must know that nothing
pleases a woman of fashion more than to bow and courtesy before every
person of royalty, and to count those who precede her out of a room."

"Surely, Margaret, you are no such menial?" He compressed his lips as he
glanced at her sharply. He had never before called her by her first name
nor presumed to take this liberty. It was more a slip of the tongue than
an act of deliberate choice, yet he would not have recalled the word.
His concern lay in her manner of action.

"And why not a menial?" Evidently she took no notice of his
presumption, or at least pretended not to do so. "Piety is by no means
the only motive which brings women to church. Position in life is
precisely what one makes it."

"Does social prestige appeal to you then?"

"I love it." She did not talk to him directly for her attention was
being centered upon the activities on the floor. "I think that a woman
who can dress with taste and distinction possesses riches above all
computation. See Mrs. Reed, there. How I envy her!"

"The wife of the President of the Council?" he asked apprehensively,
bending forward in the direction of the floor.

"The same. She enjoys a position of social eminence. How I hate her for
it." She tapped the floor with her foot as she spoke.

"You mean that you dislike her less than you envy her position?"

Just then her young squire came up and she gave him her hand for a
minuet, excusing herself to the Governor as graciously as possible.

Scarcely had she disappeared when he began to muse. What a fitting
companion she would make for a man of his rank and dignity! That she was
socially ambitious and obsessed with a passion for display he well knew.
She was not yet twenty but the disparity in their ages,--he was about
thirty-seven and a widower with three sons,--would be offset by the
disparity of their stations. No one in the city kept a finer stable of
horses nor gave more costly dinners than he. Everybody treated him with
deference, for no one presumed to question his social preeminence. The
Whigs admired him as their dashing and perhaps their most successful
General. The Tories liked him because of his aristocratic di