of American principles.  She claimed to be my friend, and to sympathize with my zeal for social truth, yet all the time she was toadying secretly the people whose luxurious exclusiveness made me tremble sometimes for the future of our country.  She and her husband were prosperous, and everything he touched seemed to turn to gold.  It may sound irreverent, James, but there was a time during my life in New York when I was discouraged; when it seemed as though heaven were mocking me and my husband in our homely struggle against the forces of evil, and bestowing all its favors on a woman whose example was a menace to American womanhood!  Sorry?  Why should I be sorry to see justice triumph and shallow iniquity rebuked?  I would give Florence Williams money if she is in want, but I am thankful, very thankful, that her heartless vanity has found its proper reward.”

Lyons fingered his beard.  “I didn’t know she was as bad as that, Selma.  Now that they have come to grief, we are not likely to be brought in contact with them, and in all probability they will pass out of our lives.  Williams was smart and entertaining, but I never liked his taking advantage of the circumstances of my having an account in his office to urge me to support a measure at variance with my political convictions.”

“Precisely.  The trouble with them both, James, is that they have no conscience; and it is eminently just they should be made to realize that people who lack conscience cannot prosper in this country in the long run.  ’They have loosed the awful lightnings of his terrible swift sword.’”

“I say ‘amen’ to that assuredly, Selma,” Lyons answered.  His predilection to palliate equivocal circumstances was never proof against clear, evidence of moral delinquency.  When his religious scruples were finally offended, he was grave and unrelenting.

The downfall of the Williamses continued to be a sweet solace and source of encouragement to Selma.  It made her, when taken in conjunction with her own recent progress, feel that the whirligig of time was working in her behalf after all; and that if she persevered, not merely Flossy, but all those who worshipped mammon, and consequently failed to recognize her talents, would be made to bite the dust.  At the moment these enemies seemed to have infested Benham.  Numerically speaking, they were unimportant, but they had established an irritating, irregular skirmish line, one end of which occupied Wetmore College, another held secret midnight meetings at Mrs. Hallett Taylor’s.  Rumors of various undertakings, educational, semi-political, artistic, or philanthropic, agitated or directed by this fringe of society, came to her ears from time to time, but she heard them as an outsider.  When she became the Governor’s wife she had said to herself that now these aristocrats would be compelled to admit her to their counsels.  But she found, to her annoyance, that the election made no difference.  Neither Pauline nor Mrs. Taylor nor any of the coterie