fragment. Mrs. Madison's nerves, never strong, had long since given
way to trouble and ill-health, and when her active strong-willed
daughter entered her twentieth year, she gladly permitted her to
become the mistress of the household and to think for both. Betty had
been educated by private tutors, then taken abroad for two years, to
France, Germany, and Italy, in order, as she subsequently observed, to
make the foreign attache. Feel more at ease when he proposed. Her
winters thereafter until the last two had been spent in Washington,
where she had been a belle and ranked as a beauty. In the fashionable
set it was believed that every attache, in the city had proposed to
her, as well as a large proportion of the old beaux and of the youths
who pursue the business of Society. Her summers she spent at her place
in the Adirondacks, at Northern watering-places, or in Europe; and the
last two years had been passed, with brief intervals of Paris and
Vienna, in England, where she had been presented with distinction and
seen much of country life. She had returned with her mother to
Washington but a month ago, and since then had spent most of her
time in her room or on horseback, breaking all her engagements after
the first ten days. Mrs. Madison had awaited the explanation with deep
uneasiness. Did her daughter, despite the health manifest in her
splendid young figure, feel the first chill of some mortal disease?
She had not been her gay self for months, and although her complexion
was of that magnolia tint which never harbours colour, it seemed to
the anxious maternal eye, looking back to six young graves, a shade
whiter than it should. Or had she fallen in love with an Englishman,
and hesitated to speak, knowing her mother's love for Washington and
bare tolerance of the British Isles? She looked askance at Betty, who
stood tapping the front of her habit with her crop and evidently
waiting for her mother to express some interest. Mrs. Madison closed
her eyes. Betty therefore continued,--