At these remarks, made with an air and in a temper quite unmistakable, Madeleine became exasperated beyond measure, and said that "Washington would be pleased to see the President do something in regard to dress-reform--or any other reform;" and with this allusion to the President's ante-election reform speeches, Mrs.Lee turned her back and left the room, followed by Sybil in convulsions of suppressed laughter, which would not have been suppressed had she seen the face of their hostess as the door shut behind them, and the energy with which she shook her head and said: "See if I don't reform you yet, you--jade!" Mrs.Lee gave Ratcliffe a lively account of this interview, and he laughed nearly as convulsively as Sybil over it, though he tried to pacify her by saying that the President's most intimate friends openly declared his wife to be insane, and that he himself was the person most afraid of her.

But Mrs.Lee declared that the President was as bad as his wife; that an equally good President and President's wife could be picked up in any corner-grocery between the Lakes and the Ohio; and that no inducement should ever make her go near that coarse washerwoman again.
Ratcliffe did not attempt to change Mrs.Lee's opinion.

Indeed he knew better than any man how Presidents were made, and he had his own opinions in regard to the process as well as the fabric produced.
Nothing Mrs.Lee could say now affected him.

He threw off his responsibility and she found it suddenly resting on her own shoulders.
When she spoke with indignation of the wholesale removals from office with which the new administration marked its advent to power, he told her the story of the President's fundamental principle, and asked her what she would have him do.

"He meant to tie my hands," said Ratcliffe, "and to leave his own free, and I accepted the condition.