“Nay, let us go softly,” came the rejoinder from the shadows.  “Woman is man’s monarch only part of the time.  We need some man who is a nice judge of psychological moments and nicely suited methods.  We stand, all of us, for the compromise of 1850.  That compromise is not yet complete.  The question of this unwelcome lady still remains to be adjusted.  Were Mr. Clay not quite so old, I might suggest his name for this last and most crucial endeavor of a long and troublous life!”

“By the Eternal Jove!” broke in the dark man at the right, shaking off the half-moodiness which had seemed to possess him.  “When it comes to wheedling, age is no such bar.  I call to mind one man who could side with Old Hickory in the case of Mrs. Peggy Eaton.  I mean him whom we call the Old Fox of the North.”

“He was a widower, even then, and hence immune,” smiled the man across the table.  “Now he is many years older.”

“Yet, none the less a widower, and all the more an adjuster of nice matters.  He has proven himself a politician.  It was his accident and not his fault not to remain with us in our party!  Yet I happen to know that though once defeated for the presidency and twice for the nomination, he remains true to his Free Soil beliefs.  It has just occurred to me, since our friend from Kentucky mentions it, that could we by some fair means, some legal means—­some means of adjustment and compromise, if you please, gentlemen,—­place this young lady under the personal care of this able exponent of the suaviter in modo, and induce him to conduct her, preferably to some unknown point beyond the Atlantic Ocean, there to lose her permanently, we should perhaps be doing our country a service, and would also be relieving this administration of one of its gravest concerns.  Best of all, we should be using a fox for a cat’s-paw, something which has not often been done.”

The matter-of-fact man who presided straightened his shoulders as though with relief at some sign of action; yet he did not relax his insistent gravity sufficiently to join the smile that followed this sally.

“Let us be sure, gentlemen, of one thing at a time,” he resumed.  “As we come to this final measure suggested by our friend from Kentucky, I am at a loss how further to proceed.  What we do can not be made public.  We can not sign a joint note asking this distinguished gentleman to act as our intermediary.”

“At the time of the ratification of the Constitution by the convention of 1787,” began the dark man who had earlier spoken, “there arose a difficulty as to the unanimity of those signing.  At the suggestion of Doctor Franklin and Mr. Gouverneur Morris, there was a clause added which stated that the Constitution was signed ‘as by the states actually present,’ this leaving the individual signers not personally responsible!  I suggest therefore, sir, that we should evade the personal responsibility of this did you put it to the vote of the states represented here.”