"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.
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