became a continual advertiser of Norton's many virtues to Carolina and
to his father, all of which the Congressman knew.

That Norton's political career was the outcome of Carolina Langdon's
ambition to shine in gay society was known to his friends as well as
his family, and his desire to win her and place her where she could
satisfy every whim had developed almost to a frenzy. Seeing evidences
of Senator Stevens' vast influence, he did not hesitate to seek a
close relationship with him, and the Senator was clever enough to lead
Norton to consider him his friend.

At the start of his political career Norton had higher ideas of honor
than guided his actions now that he had become a part of the political
machine that controlled his native State of Mississippi, and of the
bipartisan combination that dominated both houses of Congress in the
interest of the great railway and industrial corporations. Senator
Stevens and other powers had so distorted Norton's view of the
difference between public and private interests and their respective
rights that he had come to believe captial to be the sacred heritage
of the nation which must be protected at any cost. The acceptance of
a retainer from the C. St. and P. Railroad Company for wholly
unnecessary services in Washington--only another way of buying a
man--a transaction arranged by Senator Stevens, was but another stage
in the disintegration of the young Congressman's character, but it
brought him just that much closer to the point where he could claim
Carolina Langdon as his own. And opportunity does not knock twice at a
man's door--unless he is at the head of the machine.

Norton, the persevering young law student who loved the girl who had
been his boyhood playmate, was now Norton who coveted her father's