"She victimizes poor Harriet, whom she seems to think more on her level," said Miss Carter, not without unction.
Betty could feel her face flush. "The sooner she puts that idea out of her head the better," she said coldly. "I am surprised that Harriet permits a liberty of that sort."
"Harriet lacks pride, my dear, in spite of her ambition and what Nature has done for her outside. She is curiously contradictory. But that lack is one which persons of Miss Trumbull's sort are quick to detect and turn to their own account. Your housekeeper's variety of pride is common and blatant, and demands to be fed, one way or another."
Mrs. Madison had not retired and was awaiting her daughter in the living-room. Betty found the household an apparently happy one. The Major was a courtly gentleman who told stories of the war. Harriet in her soft black mull with a deep colour in her cheeks looked superb, and Betty kissed and congratulated her warmly; as Senator North had predicted, the physical repulsion had worn away long since. The big room with its matting and cane divans and chairs, heaped with bright cushions, and the pungent fire in the deep chimney—for the evenings were still cold—looked cosey and inviting; no wonder everybody was content. Even Jack looked less careworn than usual; doubtless the pines, as ever, had routed his malaria. Only Sally's gayety seemed a little forced, and there was an occasional snap in her eye and dilation of her nostril.
When Betty had put her mother to bed and talked her to sleep, she went to her own room and opened the window. She could hear the lake murmuring at the foot of the terrace, the everlasting sighing of the pines; but it was very dark: she could hardly see the grim mountains across the water. Just below them was a triple row of lights. He should have been behind those lights and he was not. For the moment she hated politics.
She closed the window and wrote the following letter:—
DEAR MR. NORTH,—I am home, you see. Don't reply and tell me that the Tariff Bill surrounds you like a fortress wall. I am going for a walk at five o'clock on Saturday morning, and I expect to meet you somewhere in the forest above the north end of the lake. You can reach it by the path on your side. I shall row there. Do not labour over an excuse, my friend. I know how you hate to write letters, and you know that I am a tyrant whose orders are always obeyed.
BETTY MADISON.
"That should not worry him," she thought, "and it should bring him."