This was gall and wormwood to her, for his name could never be flung free of that shadow. The very time and manner of his going-out had fixed failure eternally upon him. Oh why, her heart cried, could he not have died before or lived beyond it? Why had he died _then_? Mr. Mackenzie might have been mistaken, or the sentiment might have changed with the balloting, victory have come out of defeat and his fame have been without a cloud upon it. Oh, why had he not lived?—lived to outlive that one reverse—lived to overwhelm his enemies in another trial, lived to put those hateful Southern delegates again under heel? Why had he died so inopportunely? ... Why had he died at all? ... _Why had he died_? ... How could death have taken him so quickly and so unawares? He had gone briskly out of her room with the promise on his lips to hurry back. He had kissed the baby and said it looked like her.... Yes, said it looked like her—the baby— Hurriedly she snatched the _Congressional Record_ out of the drawer into which she had angrily flung it! Breathlessly she turned the pages to see what comment he had made upon that last part of Rutledge’s speech. Mr. Phillips had put but one marginal note against all that fearful presentation. Opposite the words, "when the blood of your daughter ... is mixed with that of one of this race, however ’risen,’ redolent of newly applied polish," etc., Helen saw the single written word, "unthinkable." Unthinkable! Quickly she searched again that portion of the speech that had given supreme offence—and found nothing. Nothing beside the word "unthinkable." No denial had her father entered that "vile unknown ancestral impulses, the untamed passions of a barbarous blood would be planted in the Anglo-Saxon’s very heart" by such unions as hers. No hint of his thought as to a "mongrel progeny." No answer to the question, "How shall sickly sentimentalities solace your shame if in the blood of your mulatto grandchild the vigorous red jungle corpuscles of some savage ancestor shall overmatch your more gentle endowment...?" A free expression, critical or approving, of the first half of the speech; but silence, an awful silence, when it comes to this part so pertinent to her situation. Silence!—_for the reason_ that her situation is UNTHINKABLE!