Mrs. Renfield was the widow of one of the
diplomatists who languish in perpetual first secretary-ship at our
various embassies. Her life had given her ease without triviality,
and a sense of the importance of politics seldom found in ladies of
her nationality. She regarded a public life as the noblest and most
engrossing of careers, and combined with great social versatility an
equal gift for reading blue-books and studying debates. So sincere
was the latter taste that she passed without regret from the
amenities of a European life well stocked with picturesque
intimacies to the rawness of the Midsylvanian capital. She helped
Mornway in his fight for the Governorship as a man likes to be
helped by a woman--by her tact, her good looks, her memory for
faces, her knack of saying the right thing to the right person, and
her capacity for obscure hard work in the background of his public
activity. But, above all, she helped him by making his private life
smooth and harmonious. For a man careless of personal ease, Mornway
was singularly alive to the domestic amenities.
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