But Amelia rose and twisted the shade of the lamp about, and then, as she was taking her seat again, she went on:
“I suppose it’ll be worse than ever after—after we’re—married.” She faltered, and blushed, and began making little pleats in her handkerchief, studying the effect with a sidewise turn of her head.
Vernon bent over and took both her hands in his.
“If it were only Washington!” There was a new regret in her tone, as there was in the inclination of her head.
“It shall be Washington, dear,” he said.
Amelia’s eyelids fell and she blushed again, even in the glow the lamp shed upon her face. They were silent for a moment, and then suddenly she looked up.
“Washington would be ever so much better, Morley,” she said. “I should feel as if that really amounted to something. We’d know all the diplomats, and I’m sure in that atmosphere you would become a great man.”
“I will, dear; I will,” he declared, “but it will be all for you.”
II
WHEN Vernon went into the Senate that Tuesday morning and saw the red rose lying on his desk he smiled, and picking it up, raised it eagerly to his face. But when he glanced about the chamber and saw that a rose lay on every other desk, his smile was suddenly lost in a stare of amazement. Once or twice, perhaps, flowers had been placed by constituents on the desks of certain senators, but never had a floral distribution, at once so modest and impartial, been made before. Several senators, already in their seats, saw the check this impartiality gave Vernon’s vanity, and they laughed. Their laughter was of a tone with the tinkle of the crystal prisms of the chandeliers, chiming in the breeze that came through the open windows.