Bassett
was sounding him discreetly as to her husband's plans and projects; but
these approaches had been managed with the nicest tact and discretion.
In her long absences from home she had lost touch with Bassett's
political interests and occupations, but she knew of his break with
Thatcher. She prided herself on being a woman of the world, and while
she had flinched sometimes at the attacks made upon her husband, she was
nevertheless proud of his influence in affairs. Bassett had once, at a
time when he was being assailed for smothering some measure in the
senate, given her a number of books bearing upon the anti-slavery
struggle, in which she read that the prominent leaders in that movement
had suffered the most unjust attacks, and while it was not quite clear
wherein lay Bassett's likeness to Lincoln, Lovejoy, and Wendell
Phillips, she had been persuaded that the most honorable men in public
life are often the targets of scandal. Her early years in Washington
with her father had impressed her imagination; the dream of returning
there as the wife of a Senator danced brightly in her horizons. It would
mean much to Marian and Blackford if their father, like their
Grandfather Singleton, should attain a seat in the Senate. And she was
aware that without such party service as Bassett was rendering, with
its resulting antagonisms, the virulent newspaper attacks, the social
estrangements that she had not escaped in Fraserville, a man could not
hope for party preferment.
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