Other guests followed, among them John Morley, with whom I went on long and to me very interesting walks. He seemed a very lonely and perhaps a disappointed man. He was married, but childless, and told me once that the great regret of his life was that he had no son, as he would like to have brought him up and educated him according to a theory all his own as to what an Englishman’s training really should be. How many men have had such dreams and how few, if any, can really control the future of their children! In March, 1889, Benjamin Harrison was inaugurated President and Mr. Blaine became his secretary of state. I was, as usual, terribly busy that winter with the opera, concerts, and Wagner lecture recitals, and there were times when Washington seemed very far away, but Margaret Blaine had good friends in New York whom she visited occasionally, also a sister, the wife of Colonel Coppinger of the United States army, who was stationed at Governor’s Island in New York harbor. Whenever she stayed with Mrs. Coppinger I was a very frequent passenger on the little ferry-boat which seemed to me maintained by our beneficent War Department for the sole purpose of enabling young men like myself to reach this picturesque though antiquated military fortress. Mr. Carnegie was absolutely unconscious of my aspirations regarding Margaret Blaine, and the following summer he suggested a visit to Bar Harbor, where Mr. Blaine had built a summer home. I accepted with an alacrity which he mistook as springing only from the same source as his own desire to see again the friends who had contributed so much toward the delights of the coaching trip and Cluny Castle. When I afterward told him of my hopes and that they had received some encouragement during our Bar Harbor visit, he was very much put out and vowed that if he had ever suspected anything of the kind he would never have taken me with him. He told me that he had hoped I would not think of marriage for many years, but would remain as a kind of semi-attached musical member of his household, which at that time consisted only of himself and his wife. Of course I listened to his many arguments absolutely unconvinced, and obstinate though he always was, he found his equal in me. I must confess, however, that when he saw how much in earnest I was, he not only completely receded from his position, but accepted my engagement and marriage with absolute good humor and approval. My engagement to Margaret Blaine was announced in October of the following year at the wedding of her brother, Emmons, to Anita McCormick, of Chicago. Mr. Blaine had bought the old Seward mansion on Lafayette Square, very near the White House, and Mrs. Blaine, who had a remarkable flair for harmonious house furnishings and decorations, proceeded to make it into a dignified and charming house, the special feature of which was a large drawing-room on the first floor, created by changing two rooms into one.