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never been taken in by him. From serene wife, Edith, to brilliant daughter, Alice, to the various Norn-like sisters, the ladies were never strenuous, unlike the menfolk, who never ceased to give unconvincing imitations of Theodore Roosevelt’s strenuosity and superb manliness against every odd. Even distant cousin Franklin, who resembled the presidential Roosevelts not at all, had taken to tossing his head as if his thinning locks were a lion’s mane and, of course, flashing large teeth in imitation of the one who had been what he—like all the others—wanted to be, the president. Yet Eleanor broke the sexual pattern. Serene and controlled in manner, she was over-active in deed. She climbed the rigging of ships; she paid more calls than she needed to; she over-organized her household; she was always in a desperate hurry, thought Caroline, hurrying to catch up with her at the motor car’s door, where the Irish chauffeur stood, face anxious with sobriety.
    “
Why
,” asked Caroline, out of breath, “are you always in such a hurry?”
    “Because,” said Eleanor, “I think that I am always late.”
    “For what?”
    “Oh …” She leapt into the back seat of the car. “Everything,” she said. The toothy smile was sudden and very winning. “Life.”
    Caroline settled down beside her. “That takes care of itself soon enough. Us, too.”
    “Then one must hurry to do it all.” Caroline wondered, not for the first time, if Eleanor disliked her husband. They were so well matched a political couple that only an underlying tension of some sort could explain Eleanor’s perfectionism and irrational fear of being late—of being left behind?
    Mrs. Benedict Tracy Bingham was Caroline’s finest invention. At the century’s turn when the youthful Caroline had taken over the moribund Washington
Tribune
, there was no place for the tone of the paper to go but down, down to as many common readers as possible—or out of businessaltogether. Caroline had imitated Hearst. Murders became her hallmark, particularly when the body—always female, always beauteous—was pulled from the canal. Caroline had a prejudice against the Potomac River which her editor, Mr. Trimble, honored whenever he could. Next to bodies floating in pieces along the canal that paralleled the river, robberies of the rich inhabitants of the city’s west end were highly popular, and when Mrs. Bingham, wife of “the Milk King,” as Caroline dubbed him, lost a few trinkets to a burglar who had found his way into her Connecticut Avenue house, Caroline had arbitrarily elevated Mrs. Bingham, a lady unknown to her, to First Ladyhood of Washington’s society, enlarging the house to Windsor Castle and making all her jewels crown. Mrs. Bingham had been thrilled; had cultivated Caroline; had forced the Milk King to advertise in the
Tribune
.
    In return, Caroline had helped Mrs. Bingham clamber along the heights of Washington society, an affair of mutually exclusive villages that tended to exclude the largest village of all, the government. Accustomed to the political salons of Paris, Caroline had encouraged Mrs. Bingham to specialize in members of the House of Representatives, a group no Washingtonian had ever wanted to cultivate. As Caroline had predicted, the statesmen were pathetically grateful for any attention, and so,
en masse
at Mrs. Bingham’s, they proved a sufficient draw to fill her drawing room with an interesting assortment of other villagers. Now, widowed, blind, malevolent of tongue, Mrs. Bingham had arrived; had become an institution; had, somewhat to Caroline’s bemusement, married her daughter, Frederika, to Blaise, and so the milklaced blood of the Binghams was now conjoined with the purple of the Sanfords and the Burrs in the form of a fat child. I have a lot to answer for, thought Caroline, as she and Eleanor entered the drawing room, where peacock feathers made Indian war-bonnets of a number of blameless Chinese jugs while Tiffany’s