Her idea of Mr.Ratcliffe's character was vague, and biased by mere theories of what a Prairie Giant of Peonia should be in his domestic relations.

Her idea of Peonia, too, was indistinct.

She was haunted by a vision of her sister, sitting on a horse-hair sofa before an air-tight iron stove in a small room with high, bare white walls, a chromolithograph on each, and at her side a marble-topped table surmounted by a glass vase containing funereal dried grasses; the only literature, Frank Leslie's periodical and the New York Ledger, with a strong smell of cooking everywhere prevalent.

Here she saw Madeleine receiving visitors, the wives of neighbours and constituents, who told her the Peonia news.
Notwithstanding her ignorant and unreasonable prejudice against western men and women, western towns and prairies, and, in short, everything western, down to western politics and western politicians, whom she perversely asserted to be tue lowest ot all western products, there was still some common sense in Sybil's idea.

When that inevitable hour struck for Mr.
Ratcliffe, which strikes sooner or later for all politicians, and an ungrateful country permitted him to pine among his friends in Illinois, what did he propose to do with his wife?
Did he seriously suppose that she, who was bored to death by New York, and had been able to find no permanent pleasure in Europe, would live quietly in the romantic village of Peonia?
If not, did Mr.Ratcliffe imagine that they could find happiness in the enjoyment of each other's society, and of Mrs.Lee's income, in the excitements of Washington?
In the ardour of his pursuit, Mr.Ratcliffe had accepted in advance any conditions which Mrs.Lee might impose, but if he really imagined that happiness and content lay on the purple rim of this sunset, he had more confidence in women and in money than a wider experience was ever likely to justify.
Whatever might be Mr.Ratcliffe's schemes for dealing with these obstacles they could hardly be such as would satisfy Sybil, who, if inaccurate in her theories about Prairie Giants, yet understood women, and especially her sister, much better than Mr.Ratcliffe ever could do.
Here she was safe, and it would have been better had she said no more, for Mrs.Lee, though staggered for a moment by her sister's vehemence, was reassured by what seemed the absurdity of her fears.