Mrs. Todd met him, not with the expected torrent of tears, but with a face red and twitching in excitement. The leading political party of his state had "split," and he, the farmer, Cyrus Todd, was to be run for United States senator. This strange news proved indeed an antidote for melancholy. In less than an hour he had been into town, and learned for himself how the "land lay." Two candidates, well matched, with equal backing, had just been declared by a great uprising of conservative voters utterly unsatisfactory. Todd was asked to be the dark horse. He would have turned from the proposition flattered and abashed, with the one remark that he "wasn't the cut of cloth for a politician," but ambition had begun to work like a fever in the veins of Mrs. Todd. Already the magnate of her small community, she wished to test her powers in the capital itself. She knew that Gwendolen was to be a beauty, and recognized the potency of an attractive débutante, allied to a rich father and an aspiring mama. The longest letter ever penned by her fat hand now sped to Gwendolen. Her arguments were good, though turgidly expressed. Gwendolen took fire. In a tumult of violet-tinted letters, chokingly perfumed, she assured her father that the school in which she now languished was a cheerless jail. She said that the plain fare, particularly the raw beef, choked her, and that the rooms were kept so hot that soon she must go into consumption. Above all, she was dying by inches so far away from her "dear, precious, darling, angelic dad!" It was this last representation that won. Todd gave in his name, made a few public speeches that surprised him more than his friends by their humor, sparkle, and good sense, and with little further effort received the nomination. For more than four years, now, the Todds had lived in Washington. Mrs. Todd's initial step had been to buy a good, substantial home in a fashionable neighborhood. She soon realized that she was not to dominate society; but, after a few months of sulking, she adjusted herself comfortably to the new conditions, and enjoyed her life thoroughly. Gwendolen was put to the best private school in the city. She could be at home now, in the evenings, to play her father "those tinkly, skee-daddly pieces" which he liked. No homely melodies for Senator Todd! His childhood was passed without them, and they bore no tender recollections. Chopin, and an occasional rag-time bit, stirred his veins. Gwendolen's music-master had kept to himself hopes that, in the girl, he might have a brilliant result;--her parents had neither the knowledge nor the insight to perceive it for themselves.