They landed in New York the last of March, and from the long mirror into which she looked, in her hotel bedroom, there gazed back at Mrs. Frémont a comely young woman clad in a riding habit that had been abbreviated to a convenient walking length, a pair of black satin slippers, a leghorn hat tied down with a China crêpe scarf, and a Scotch plaid shawl that had borne the brunt of her year's outing,--in a word, the wife of a United States Senator from the golden West. On another morning of the early spring two years later, such were the contrasts which the events of her life produced, she stood in the throne-room of Buckingham Palace, awaiting presentation to the Queen of England. To the British eyes that looked upon her she was a graceful, distinguished woman, sharing in the renown of her husband, the American explorer, and a recent medallist of the Royal Geographical Society, whose honors are only conferred upon those whose expeditions are taken out at personal cost and sacrifice. In the faultless details of her court dress she was a gratification to the most critical taste. Its exquisite design, shading in color from the faint pink that touches the outer edge of a rose petal to the deeper tone it assumes near the heart, with clusters of the fair flower itself giving it an almost fragrant emphasis and bringing out the delicate beauty of her fine face, seemed a part of herself, so gracefully did she wear it, carrying its sweep of train with a queenliness that was of her nature. On the 17th of June, 1856, Frémont was unanimously nominated for the Presidency by the National Republican Convention at Philadelphia. He was the first choice of the Free Soil, which became, later, the Republican party, and he was also, probably, the only man of whom Lincoln, the first successful candidate of that party, was ever jealous. Fearing a military rival, and recognizing in Frémont the qualities that gave him a natural supremacy among men, he kept him in the background. He foresaw correctly. The military hero came, but he came in the person of the man to whom opportunity had been a fairy godmother. Though he polled the vote of all the Northern States but five, the time was not ripe for a Republican President when Frémont was a candidate for that high honor. The men, like Benton, who still led the political thought of that day, and who knew every aspect of the country, realizing the peril that lay in countenancing sectionalism, could not give their support to a candidate who stood upon a sectional platform.