Lee not a
little, especially when short and vague paragraphs, soon followed
by longer and more positive ones, in regard to Senator Ratcliffe's
matrimonial prospects, began to appear in newspapers, along with
descriptions of herself from the pens of enterprising female
correspondents for the press, who had never so much as seen her.
At the first sight of one of these newspaper articles, Madeleine
fairly cried with mortification and anger. She wanted to leave
Washington the next day, and she hated the very thought of
Ratcliffe. There was something in the newspaper style so
inscrutably vulgar, something so inexplicably revolting to the
sense of feminine decency, that she shrank under it as though it
were a poisonous spider. But after the first acute shame had
passed, her temper was roused, and she vowed that she would
pursue her own path just as she had begun, without regard to all
the malignity and vulgarity in the wide United States. She did not
care to marry Senator Ratcliffe; she liked his society and was
flattered by his confidence; she rather hoped to prevent him from
ever making a formal offer, and if not, she would at least push it
off to the last possible moment; but she was not to be frightened
from marrying him by any amount of spitefulness or gossip, and
she did not mean to refuse him except for stronger reasons than
these. She even went so far in her desperate courage as to laugh at
her cousin, Mrs.
Clinton, whose venerable husband she allowed and even
encouraged to pay her such public attention and to express
sentiments of such youthful ardour as she well knew would
inflame and exasperate the excellent lady his wife.
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