"You do not suspect who the weakening member was?"
"If I cared to ask, I dare say your fair divorcée friend would be able to enlighten me, but the petty political schemes engineered by lobbyists do not interest me."
"One moment, Miss Kent. You did not come to my musicale. I have only one olive twig left. We entertain a few friends to-morrow night in honor of a famous Western woman, who will lecture next season on 'Civic Problems,' for the purpose of raising money to build a vast, up-to-date club temple, where women can proclaim their views on female right to suffrage and expansion. May I have the pleasure of presenting you?"
"You are very kind, Miss Higginbottom, but as we leave Washington at the end of the week, I regret that I shall not have time for any new engagements. Pray accept my thanks for several courtesies."
"I used to wonder why you are so unpopular, but it soon ceased to be a mystery, and it will be no sacrifice to you to give up Washington, in retiring from public life. When Senator Kent formally resigns—as is the burden of a little bird's song that utters no false notes—he will, doubtless, consign you to a more congenial circle of friends."
"In saying good-bye, I shall find some solace in the assurance that at least you will not mourn inconsolably because of my final departure. Please present my best wishes to Mrs. Higginbottom, who has shown me much kindness, and whom I may not be able to see again. Good-bye."
She stood a few seconds, smiling mischievously into the florid face of the large-featured woman of most certain age, whose light-yellow eyes flashed back unmistakable malice, then, amid the roar of applause that greeted the peroration of a white-haired senator in the chamber below, she quietly stole out of the Capitol, and sought a favorite corner of the Smithsonian grounds.
Walking slowly, she asked in a spirit of self-chastisement why she had allowed waspish stings to provoke a retaliatory tone, at variance with that cool repose of well-bred urbanity and imperturbable courtesy on which she prided herself; and was not the condescension of retort an unladylike and mortifying weakness?
Now and then come radiant days when a noon sun shines hot, and no faintest film flecks the stainless blue, yet one grows vaguely conscious of waning brightness, and gradually the horizon blanches to a deadly grey, while leaden clouds creep into view like spectral fingers of some vast hand groping across the sky to smother the sun. Shadows projected by the invisible unnerve natures that fearlessly face tangible, well-defined danger, as 'the sallow, weird light preceding an eclipse is more menacing than its total darkness, where friendly stars still shine.' For Eglah, the clock of fate had begun to chime that mauvais quart d'heure which Mrs. Maurice had known would inevitably overtake her, and the preliminary whirring of the hidden cogs had found her unprepared. Blind faith in her father's sagacity, political steadfastness, and incorruptibility, had built a pedestal from which he smiled down benignantly upon her, making life a festival; but when the needle of doubt pricked the fine veil love spun across her vision, and she dared allow herself to question, a shivering and nameless dread shook her happy young heart, as unexpectedly blighting as a shower of sleet on an August passion-flower. When Jove nods his worship wanes.
Since the night of the cotillon, several inexplicable circumstances, comparatively slight yet cumulative, had perplexed this fond and loyal daughter, who began to find the maze of Senator Kent's political methods too tortuous for her exploration.