But she had not seen Senator North since the day following the funeral. Mrs. Madison had announced with emphasis that she had had as much as she could stand and would not remain another day in the Adirondacks; she wanted Narragansett and the light and agreeable society of many Southern friends who did not have frequent tragedies in their families. Betty telegraphed for rooms at one of the large hotels at the Pier, and thereafter had the satisfaction of seeing her mother gossip contentedly for hours with other ladies of lineage and ante-bellum reminiscences, or sit with even deeper contentment for intermediate hours upon the veranda of the Casino. When she herself was bored beyond endurance, she crossed the bay and lunched or dined in Newport, where she had many friends; and she spent much time on horseback. When the season was over, they paid a round of visits to country houses, and finished with the few weeks in New York necessary for the replenishment of Miss Madison's wardrobe. She had hoped to reach Washington for the opening of Congress, but her mother had been ill, prolonging the last visit a fortnight, and gowns must be consulted upon, fitted and altered did the world itself stand still. And this was the one period of mental rest that Betty had experienced since her parting from Senator North. She had been much with people during these five months, seeking and finding little solitude, and few had found any change in her beyond a deeper shade of indifference and more infrequent flashes of humour. She permitted men to amuse her if she did not amuse them, to all out-door sports she was faithful, and she read the new books and talked intelligently of the fashions. When the conversation swung with the precision of a pendulum from clothes and love to war with Spain, her mind leapt at once to action, and she argued every advocate of war into a state of fury. She had responded heavily to the President's appeal in behalf of the reconcentrados, but her mind was no longer divided. The failure of the belligerency resolutions to reach the attention of the House during the Extra Session of Congress had rekindled the war fever in the country; and the constant chatter about the suffering Cuban and the duty of the United States, the black iniquity of the Speaker and the timidity of the President, were wearying to the more evenly balanced members of the community. "You say that we need a war," said Betty contemptuously one day, "that it will shake us up and do us good. If we had fallen as low as that, no war could lift us, certainly not the act of bullying a small country, of rushing into a war with the absolute certainty of success. But we need no war. American manhood is where it always has been and always will be until we reach that pitch of universal luxury and sloth and vice which extinguished Rome. Those commercial and financial pursuits should make a man less a man is the very acme of absurdity. If our men were drawn into a righteous war