"I thank you cordially for your appreciation," he answered. "You have grasped the vital kernel of my speech and I am grateful for your good opinion."
Even in addressing the other sex, Lyons could not forget the responsibility of his frock-coat and that it was incumbent upon him to be strictly serious in public. Nevertheless his august but glib demeanor suited Selma's mood better than more obvious gallantry, especially as she got the impression, which he really wished to convey, that he admired her. It was out of the question for him to prolong the situation in the face of those waiting to grasp his hand, but Lyons heard with interest the statement which Mrs. Earle managed to whisper hoarsely in his ear just as he turned to welcome the next comer, and they were swept along:
"She is one of our brightest minds. The poor child has recently lost her husband, and has come to keep Mr. Parsons company in his new house—an ideal arrangement."
The identity of Mr. Parsons was well known to Lyons. He had met him occasionally in the past in other parts of the State in connection with business complications, and regarded him as a practical, intelligent citizen whose name would be of value to an aspirant for Congressional honors. It occurred to him as he shook hands with those next in line and addressed them that it would be eminently suitable if he should pay his respects to this new-comer to Benham by a visit. By so doing he world kill two birds with one stone, for he had reasoned of late that he owed it to himself to see more of the other sex. He had no specific matrimonial intentions; that is, he was not on the lookout for a wife; but he approved of happy unions as one of the great bulwarks of the community, and was well-disposed to encounter a suitable helpmate. He should expect physical charms, dignity, capacity and a sympathetic mind; a woman, in short, who would be an ornament to his home, a Christian influence in society and a companion whose intelligent tact would be likely to promote his political fortunes. And so it happened that in the course of the next few days he found himself thinking of Mrs. Littleton as a fine figure of a woman. This had not happened to him before since the death of his wife, and it made him thoughtful to the extent of asking "Why not?" For in spite of his long frock-coat and proper demeanor, passion was not extinct in the bosom of the Hon. James O. Lyons, and he was capable on special and guarded occasions of telling a woman that he loved her.
CHAPTER III.
Miss Luella Bailey was not elected. The unenlightened prejudice of man to prefer one of his own sex, combined with the hostility of the Reform Club, procured her defeat, notwithstanding that the rest of her ticket triumphed at the polls. There was some consolation for her friends in the fact that her rival, Miss Snow, had a considerably smaller number of votes than she. Selma solaced herself by the reflection that, as she had been consulted only at the twelfth hour, she was not responsible for the result, but she felt nerved by the defeat to concentrate her energies against the proposed bill for an appointed school board.
Her immediate attention and sympathy were suddenly invoked by the illness of Mr. Parsons, who had seemed lacking in physical vigor for some weeks, and whose symptoms culminated in a slight paralysis, which confined him to his bed for a month, and to his house during the remainder of the autumn. Selma rejoiced in this opportunity to develop her capacities as a nurse, to prove how adequate she would have been to take complete charge of her late husband, had Dr. Page chosen to trust her. She administered with scrupulous regularity to the invalid such medicines as were ordered, and kept him cheerful by reading and conversation, so that the physician in charge complimented her on her proficiency. Trained nurses were unknown in Benham at this time, and any old or unoccupied female was regarded as qualified to watch over the sick. Selma appreciated from what she had observed of the conduct of Wilbur's nurse that there was a wrong and a right way of doing things, but she blamed Dr. Page for his failure to appreciate instinctively that she was sure to do things suitably. It seemed to her that he had lacked the intuitive gift to discern latent capabilities—a fault of which the Benham practitioner proved blameless.
From the large, sunny chamber in which Mr. Parsons slowly recovered some portion of his vitality, Selma could discern the distant beginnings of Wetmore College, pleasantly situated on an elevation well beyond the city limits on the further side of the winding river. An architect had been engaged to carry out Wilbur's plans, and she watched the outlines of the new building gradually take shape during the convalescence of her benefactor. She recognized that the college would be theoretically a noble addition to the standing of Benham as a city of intellectual and æsthetic interests, but it provoked her to think that its management was in the hands of Mrs. Hallett Taylor and her friends, between whom and herself she felt that a chasm of irreconcilable differences of opinion existed. Mrs. Taylor had not called on her since her return. She believed that she was glad of this, and hoped that some of the severely indignant criticism which she had uttered in regard to the Reform Club movement had reached her ears. Or was Mrs. Taylor envious of her return to Benham as the true mistress of this fine establishment on the River Drive, so superior to her own? Nevertheless, it would have suited Selma to have been one of the trustees of this new college—her husband's handiwork in the doing of which he had laid down his promising life—and the fact that no one had sought her out and offered her the honor as a fitting recognition of her due was secretly mortifying. The Benham Institute had been prompt to acknowledge her presence by giving a reception in her honor, at which she was able to recite once more, "Oh, why should the Spirit of Mortal be proud?" with old-time success, and she had been informed by Mrs. Earle that she was likely to be chosen one of the Vice-Presidents at the annual meeting. But these Reform Club people had not even done her the courtesy to ask her to join them or consider their opinions. She would have spurned the invitation with contempt, but it piqued her not to know more about them; it distressed her to think that there should exist in Benham an exclusive set which professed to be ethically and intellectually superior and did not include her, for she had come to Benham with the intention of leading such a movement, to the detriment of fashion and frivolity. With Mr. Parsons's money at her back, she was serenely confident that the houses of the magnates of Benham—the people who corresponded in her mind's eye to the dwellers on Fifth Avenue—would open to her. Already there had been flattering indications that she would be able to command attention there. She had expected to find this so; her heart would have been broken to find it otherwise. Still, her hope in shaking the dust of New York from her feet had been to find in Benham an equally admirable and satisfactory atmosphere in regard to mental and moral progress. She had come just in time, it is true, to utter her vehement protest against this exclusive, aristocratic movement—this arrogant affectation of superiority, and to array herself in battle line against it, resolved to give herself up with enthusiasm to its annihilation. Yet the sight of the college buildings for the higher education of women, rising without her furtherance and supervision, and under the direction of these people, made her sad and gave her a feeling of disappointment. Why had they been permitted to obtain this foothold? Someone had been lacking in vigilance and foresight. Thank heaven, with her return and a strong, popular spirit like Mr. Lyons in the lead, these unsympathetic, so-called reformers would speedily be confounded, and the intellectual air of Benham restored to its original purity.
One afternoon while Selma's gaze happened to be directed toward the embryo college walls, and she was incubating on the situation, Mr. Parsons, who had seemed to be dozing, suddenly said:
"I should like you to write to Mr. Lyons, the lawyer, and ask him to come to see me."