"And it wouldn't be in nature for a person as grasping of power as he is not to be eager about money also." With the advent of plutocratic fashion respect for official position had dwindled at Washington.

In Rome in the days when the imperators became mere creatures of the army, the seat of fashion and of power was transferred to the old and rich families aloof from the government and buying peace and privilege from it.

So Washington's fashionable society has come to realize, even more clearly than does the rest of the country, that, despite spasmodic struggles and apparent spurts of reaction, power has passed to the plutocracy, and that officialdom is, as a rule, servant verging toward slave.

Still, form is a delusion of tenacious hold upon the human mind.

The old lady's discoveries of Craig's political prospects did not warm her toward him as would news that he was in the way of being vastly rich; but she retained enough of the fading respect for high-titled office to feel that he was not the quite impossibility she had fancied, but was fit to be an aspirant for an aristocratic alliance.
"If Margaret doesn't fall in love with him after she marries him," reflected she, "all may be well.