On those occasions Mrs. Phillips had shown unmistakable opposition to the acts of her liege lord. Elise had more than seconded her mother in haughty indignation; though with her superb training in obedience she could not be openly rebellious. When he had brought the quartette into his home Mr. Phillips could not fail to see the pain in his wife’s eyes as she asked: "Was that necessary?" "Why, can you not see," he replied with some hot feeling in his tones, "that it was the only thing to be done? They are very respectable people, all of them. They are intelligent and well-bred, as you can see. Why should the simple matter of colour alone keep me from doing what I just as quickly might have done for a white man?" The unconscious humour of this way of putting it did not reach Mrs. Phillips, and the Colonel’s tone and manner, not his words, kept her silent when he had finished. She could not quarrel with him; and he thought he had answered her reason, though he admitted inwardly that her prejudices were unconverted. Nevertheless he did not open the discussion again. Helen, however, naturally siding with her father, did not hesitate to bring it up repeatedly, and youthfully to descant at length and with some elaboration of ideas on the propriety and admirableness of her father’s act. Mrs. Phillips, with the sole purpose of preserving parental discipline and not wishing even slightly to encourage insubordination, had very little to say to Helen about it; while Elise answered all the younger girl’s effusions with sniffs of disdain. * * * * * These incidents and Elise’s womanly perversity and curiosity really gave Evans Rutledge a great opportunity if he only could have read the portents of circumstance and calculated to a nicety the eccentricity of a woman’s heart. The entertainment of negro guests at the mansion of an aspirant for the presidency was given wide publicity by the press and was the subject of universal though temporary notice by newspapers and editorial writers of every class. Rutledge, in his capacity as Washington representative of a half-dozen newspapers over the country, contributed his share to the general chorus of comment. When Elise read in a Cleveland paper a clipping accredited to "Evans Rutledge in Chicago American," she suddenly became desirous of seeing that young man again. The sentiments, stripped of the tartness in their expression and a seeming lack of appreciation of her distinguished father’s dignity, were so in accord with hers that she was startled at the exact coincidence of thought—while still resentful of the free and fierce criticism.