"You would demand that, my dear?" smiled the pleasant gentleman who now was bowing himself toward the door. "I would demand it!" By the time he had opportunity to rally his senses, assailed as they were by the sight of her, by the splendor of her apparel, by the music of her voice, the fragrance which clung about her, the charm of her smiles,--by the time, in short, which he required to turn half about, she was gone. He heard her light step at the stair. "My soul!" he exclaimed, wiping his brow with a silken kerchief. "So much for attempting to sacrifice principle--for expecting to mix Free Soil and Whig! Damn that Kentuckian!" CHAPTER XXVII A SPLENDID FAILURE If it is easy to discover why there was no special embassy sent by this government to Turkey for the purpose of inviting the distinguished patriot Kossuth to visit America, (that matter being concluded in rather less formal fashion after the return home of the Hungarian committee of inquiry--a ship of our navy being despatched to carry him to our shores) it with equal ease may be understood why the Countess St. Auban after this remained unmolested. A quaking administration, bent only on keeping political matters in perfect balance, and on quenching promptly, as best it might, any incipient blaze of anti-slavery zeal which might break out from its smoldering, dared make no further move against her. She was now too much in the public eye to be safe even in suppression, and so was left to pursue her own way for a time; this the more readily, of course, because she was doing nothing either illegal or reprehensible. Indeed, as has been said, she was only carrying out in private way a pet measure of Mr. Fillmore himself, one which he had only with difficulty been persuaded to eliminate from his first presidential message--that of purchasing the slaves and deporting them from our shores. The government at Washington perforce looked on, shivering, dreading lest this thing might fail, dreading also lest it might not fail. It was a day of compromise, of cowardice, of politics played as politics; a day of that political unwisdom which always is dangerous--the fear of riding straight, the ignorance of the saving quality of honest courage. Wherefore, matters went on thus, fit foundation now building for that divided and ill-ordered house of this republic, whose purification could only be found in the cleansing catastrophe of fire so soon to come.