shrewdness and tact and
large knowledge of the world, the world of diplomacy as well as of
business. And under his manipulation the vast fortune so acquired was
reported to have been doubled. It was at any rate almost fabulous in the
public estimation.

When the charming widow of the late Rodney Henderson, then sojourning in
Rome, placed her attractive self and her still more attractive fortune in
the hands of Mr. Thomas Mavick, United States Minister to the Court of
Italy, she attained a position in the social world which was in accord
with her ambition, and Mavick acquired the means of making the mission,
in point of comparison with the missions of the other powers at the
Italian capital, a credit to the Great Republic. The match was therefore
a brilliant one, and had a sort of national importance.

Those who knew Mrs. Mavick in the remote past, when she was the
fascinating and not definitely placed Carmen Eschelle, and who also knew
Mr. Mavick when he was the confidential agent of Rodney Henderson, knew
that their union was a convenient and material alliance, in which the
desire of each party to enjoy in freedom all the pleasures of the world
could be gratified while retaining the social consideration of the world.
Both had always been circumspect. And it may be added, for the
information of strangers, that they thoroughly knew each other, and were
participants in a knowledge that put each at disadvantage, so that their
wedded life was a permanent truce. This bond of union was not ideal, and
not the best for the creation of individual character, but it avoided an
exhibition of those public antagonisms which so grieve and disturb the
even flow of the current of society, and give occasion to so much witty
comment on the institution of marriage itself.

When, some two years after Mr. Mavick relinquished the mission to Italy
to another statesman who had done some service to the opposite party, an
heiress was born to the house of Mavick, her appearance in the world
occasioned some disappointment to those who had caused it. Mavick
naturally wished a son to inherit his name and enlarge the gold
foundation upon which its perpetuity must rest; and Mrs. Mavick as
naturally shrank from a responsibility that promised to curtail freedom
of action in the life she loved. Carmen--it was an old saying of the
danglers in the time of Henderson--was a domestic woman except in her own
home.

However, it is one of the privileges of we