At that moment Diana entered the dining room with the air of a Duchess, and, with unwonted sweetness, said: “Please, Polydore, bring me de tea things. De ladies is faint.” Polydore, anxious that Diana’s gentle mood should endure, made all haste to bring what she desired. He made too much haste, unluckily, for in his hurry he managed to spill a little hot water from a pitcher he was carrying on a tray, and some drops of it fell upon the sleeve of Diana’s daintily laundered cambric gown. The stately bronze colored namesake of the ancient goddess rose in offended dignity, and looked long at the offender before addressing him. Then she witheringly put the question: “Whar’s your manners dis mawnin’, Polydore? Jes’ spose I was Miss Mony now; would you go sloppin’ things over her dat way?” Even a worm will turn, we are told, and Polydore was prouder than a worm. For once he lost his self-control so far as to say in reply: “But you _ain’t_ Miss Mony, dough you seems to think you is. I’se tired o’ yer highty tighty airs. Git de tea things for yerse’f!” With that Polydore left the dining room, and Diana, curiously enough, made no reference to the incident when next she encountered him, but was all smiles and sweetness instead. XXVIII THE ADVANCING SHADOW _N_o sooner were Dorothy and Edmonia gone than Arthur turned again to affairs. It was a troubled uneasy time in Virginia, a time of sore apprehension and dread. The “irrepressible conflict” over slavery had that year taken on new and more threatening features than ever before. There was now a strong political party at the North the one important article of whose creed was hostility to the further extension of slavery into the territories. It was a strictly sectional party in its composition, having no existence anywhere at the South. It was influential in Congress, and in 1856 it had strongly supported a candidate of its own for president. By the beginning of 1860 its strength had been greatly increased and circumstances rendered probable its success in electing a president that year, for the hopeless division of the Democratic party, which occurred later in the year, was already clearly foreshadowed, an event which in fact resulted in the nomination of three rival candidates against Mr. Lincoln and made his election certain in spite of a heavy popular majority against him.