would be crying aloud for the poor who are born to suffer and to die, and to have helped them she would cheerfully have given the very clothes off her back. But cowardice kept her silent, as it kept her silent in the presence of her servants, whom she feared inexpressibly. If Mrs. Baldwin was constitutionally timid, not so Eleanor. All the courage of her father had gone into his willowy, beautiful, well-groomed daughter. Her first recollections were of the inland town where they lived secluded in their big house, because nobody was good enough for them to associate with after their fortune was made. Then she was taken to Europe and returned a finished product, with no more notion of what the word “American” meant than if she had been a daughter of the Hapsburgs. As a compromise between Europe and America, Baldwin had pitched upon Washington as a place of residence. His social status had been agreeably fixed by a lucky accident--he had been asked to be pall-bearer for a foreign Minister who died in Washington. Baldwin rightly considered the dead diplomat worth, to him, all the live ones going; for, having assisted in carrying the dead man from the Legation to the hearse, Baldwin was, in consequence, elected to the swell club, asked to the smart cotillion, and made more headway in a month in the smart set than he could have made otherwise in a year. He repaid his debt to the dead diplomat by buying some very ordinary pictures at the sale of the Minister’s effects, and paying the most extravagant price ever heard of for them. To Eleanor their social rise was nothing surprising. She expected it, having been bred like a young princess, only with less of democracy than real princesses are bred. When she entered the room with Mrs. Hill-Smith, Baldwin rose and responded smilingly to Mrs. Hill-Smith’s remark: “Here you are, as usual, among your books.” “Yes--as usual, among my books. I daresay your father, the Secretary, spends a good deal of time among _his_ books.” “Oh, yes,” replied Mrs. Hill-Smith, airily, “but he has been dreadfully put out of late. Congress has been so troublesome. I don’t know exactly _how_, but it has annoyed papa extremely.” “Very reprehensible,” said Baldwin, earnestly, who had the opinion of the average commercial man that Congress is a machine to create prosperity, or its reverse, and if prosperity is not created, Congressmen are blamed fools. “I _hate_ Congressmen--except a few from New York,” said Eleanor, drawing off her gloves daintily. “There was one talking to Miss Maitland when we stopped her on the street just now. The creature was introduced to me at one of those queer Southern houses where they introduce people without asking permission first, and ever since then the man has tried to talk to me whenever we meet. But I really couldn’t stand him. This morning I cut him dead. His name is Crane, and he’s from somewhere in the West.”