Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the city room.djvu/100

 "Thank you, yes," replied the younger woman, settling herself comfortably in the shadow of the fountain. The heat of the day was over, and the twilight hour in the scented garden was very grateful.

"I am sure there must be somebody," she mused, "who really loves that woman, and whose heart is the one that is pained most by the ceremony to-day. That is the person who ought to have had those very last words and that last caress which were given to me. But it was n't my fault."

More than a year later the country was in the throes of a great political campaign. It had been conclusively proven by the news papers that the opponent of the candidate whose cause they espoused was a man absolutely unfit, mentally and morally, for the high place he sought, and whose administration, were he elected, would stand forever as a black page in the nation's history. Local news was cut to pieces or pushed wholly aside to make room for the national questions of the day and their countless ramifications. On several occasions during the great