And thus the summer days dragged slowly to an end, with Helen and her footman becoming at odd times better acquainted with the thoughts and personal views each of the other on a wider and ever wider range of subjects. Helen was too unsophisticated in her thought to notice anything unusual in a lackey’s being possessed of Hayward’s intelligence and ease of manner. The ever present mystery of his refusal to exploit his heroic deeds dwarfed or overshadowed all other questions that might have arisen in her mind as to anything out of the ordinary in him. She did believe that he was suffering some sort of martyrdom in silence, and her womanly sympathy grew stronger as she knew more of him. Not for a moment was the relation of mistress and man lost sight of by either; but the revelation of the real woman and man, each to other, went steadily on. *CHAPTER XIII* The era of good feeling seemed to have been ushered in along with Mr. Phillips’ inauguration. The country was prosperous to a degree. Labour was receiving steady employment and a fair wage and uttered no complaint. Capital was adding surplus to per cent., and was content. The Cuban skirmish with Spain and the trial-by-battle with Germany had cemented again in blood the sections divided by the Great War—so closely indeed that nobody, not even Presidents on hand-shaking junkets, thought to mention it. Any sporadic "waver of the bloody shirt" was considered an anachronism and laughed at as a harmless idiot. It was true that the negro question, being present in the flesh and incapable of banishment, was yet a momentous problem: but it was considered in cooler temper as being either a national or a local question—not sectional in any sense. President Phillips in his first message to Congress, as in his inaugural address, felicitated his countrymen upon the unity of the American people and the American spirit, and on both occasions gave a new rhetorical turn and oratorical flourish to the statement that his father was from Massachusetts and his mother a South Carolinian. In sections of the South where his party was admittedly effete or undoubtedly odorous he hesitated not to appoint to office men of political faith radically differing from his own—and all good citizens applauded. Partisanry was settling itself down for a good long sleep, and strife had ceased. The lion and the lamb were lain down together, and there was none that made afraid in all the holy mountain of American good-will and fair prospect. Into this sectionally serene and peaceful situation, which Mr. Phillips deemed largely the result of his personal effort as a non-sectional American executive, he deliberately or impulsively pitched an issue which set one-third of his admiring countrymen by the ears.