“I had thought of that.  While Mr. Parsons lives, I realize that your first duty must be to him.”

The reverential gravity of his tone was in excess of the needs of the occasion, and Selma understood that he intended to imply that Mr. Parsons would not long need her care.  The same thought was in her own mind, and it had occurred to her in the course of her previous cogitations in regard to Lyons, that in the event of his death it would suit her admirably to continue to occupy the house as its real mistress.  She looked grave for a moment in her turn, then with a sudden access of coyness she murmured, “I do not believe that I am mistaken in you.”

“Ah,” he cried, and would have folded her in his arms, but she evaded his onset and said with her dramatic intonation, “The knights of old won their lady-loves by brilliant deeds.  If you are elected a member of Congress, you may come to claim me.”

Reflection served only to convince Selma of the wisdom of her decision to try matrimony once more.  She argued, that though a third marriage might theoretically seem repugnant if stated as a bald fact, the actual circumstances in her case not merely exonerated her from a lack of delicacy, but afforded an exhibition of progress—­a gradual evolution in character.  She felt light-hearted and triumphant at the thought of her impending new importance as the wife of a public man, and she interested herself exuberantly in the progress of the political campaign.  She was pleased to think that her stipulation had given her lover a new spur to his ambition, and she was prepared to believe that his victory would be due to the exhaustive efforts to win which the cruel possibility of losing her obliged him to make.

This was a campaign era of torch-light processions.  The rival factions expressed their confidence and enthusiasm by parading at night in a series of battalions armed with torches—­some resplendently flaring, some glittering gayly through colored glass—­and bearing transparencies inscribed with trenchant sentiments.  The houses of their adherents along the route were illuminated from attic to cellar with rows of candles, and the atmosphere wore a dusky glow of red and green fire.  To Selma all this was entrancing.  She revelled in it as an introduction to the more conspicuous life which she was about to lead.  She showed herself a zealous and enthusiastic partisan, shrouding the house in the darkness of Erebus on the occasion when the rival procession passed the door, and imparting to every window the effect of a blaze of light on the following evening—­the night before election—­when the Democratic party made its final appeal to the voters.  Standing on a balcony in evening dress, in company with Mrs. Earle and Miss Luella Bailey, whom she had invited to view the procession from the River Drive, Selma looked down on the parade in an ecstatic mood.  The torches, the music, the fireworks and the enthusiasm set her pulses astir and brought her heart into her