“Yes, Elizabeth Darrell has come back, as poor as a church mouse, and dreadfully changed. I shall call to see her. She will find a very different Washington from the one she left ten years ago.”
“Miss Clavering,” announced the negro butler.
Anne Clavering, graceful and self-possessed, entered the room. She had not the sumptuous beauty of her sisters, nor remarkable beauty at all; yet, as Elizabeth Darrell had seen in that first accidental view of her, she was more than beautiful—she was interesting. She had no marks of race, but she had every mark of refinement. Her gown was simple, but exquisite, and she wore no jewels. Mrs. Luttrell received her amiably and even affectionately, and her quick eye noted that both Anne and Baskerville blushed at meeting.
“So you are not above coming out to an unfashionable dinner with an old fogy,” she said, taking Anne’s hand.
“I believe it is considered one of the greatest privileges of Washington to dine with you at one of your ‘unfashionable dinners,’” Anne replied, with her pleasant smile. This made Anne’s fortune with Mrs. Luttrell.
In a minute or two more Senator and Mrs. Thorndyke were announced, and they were promptly followed by Judge Woodford, a handsome antique gentleman, who had for forty years counted on being one day established as the head of Mrs. Luttrell’s fine house. The Thorndykes were not a young couple, although they had not been long married. Their love-affair had covered a long period of separation and estrangement, and at last when fate had relented and had brought them together in their maturity, it gave them by way of recompense a depth of peace, of confidence, of quiet happiness, and a height of thrilling joy at coming into their own inheritance of love, that made for them a heaven on earth. Thorndyke was a high-bred, scholarly man of the best type of New England, who hid under a cool exterior an ardent and devoted nature. Constance Thorndyke was exteriorly the scintillant, magnetic Southern woman, but inwardly she was as strong and as sustaining as Thorndyke himself. Neither of them had a grain of mawkish sentimentality, and they were always differing playfully when they really differed seriously; but they never differed in their love and admiration of what was good.
Baskerville took Anne out to dinner. He had several times had that good fortune, especially in Mrs. Thorndyke’s house, and so far as dinner companions went he and Anne were well acquainted. Anne had been deeply mortified at Baskerville’s ignoring her invitation to call, and the reason she at once suspected—his knowledge of her father’s character and his share in furnishing information to the senatorial committee which was investigating Senator Clavering. She did not for one moment suspect that Baskerville put compulsion on himself to keep away from her house. She was conscious of a keen pleasure in his society, and a part of the gratification she felt at being asked to one of Mrs. Luttrell’s intimate dinners was that Baskerville should know how Mrs. Luttrell esteemed her.
