"There is the carriage of the French minister," said Bertha, "and madame wonders who detains her. But—if I were a regiment of soldiers, I am sure I should obey you when you spoke to me in such a tone as that."
And as if by magic she was herself again, and, taking her roses from him, went up the carpeted steps lightly, and with a gay rustle of trailing silk and lace.
The large rooms inside were crowded with a distinguished company, made up of the material which forms the foundation of every select Washingtonian assemblage. There were the politicians, military and naval men, attachés of legations, foreign ministers and members of the Cabinet, with their wives and daughters, or other female relatives. A distinguished scientist loomed up in one corner, looking disproportionately modest; a well-known newspaper man chatted in another. The Chinese minister, accompanied by his interpreter, received with a slightly wearied air of quiet patience the conversational attentions proffered him. The wife of the Secretary of State stood near the door with her daughter, receiving her guests as they entered. She was a kindly and graceful woman, whose good breeding and self-poise had tided her safely over the occasionally somewhat ruffled social waters of two administrations. She had received a hundred or so of callers each Wednesday,—the majority of them strangers, and in the moments of her greatest fatigue and lassitude had endeavored to remember that each one of them was a human being, endowed with human vanity and sensitiveness; she had not flinched before the innocent presumption of guileless ignorance; she had done her best by timorousness and simplicity; she had endeavored to remember hundreds of totally uninteresting people, and if she had forgotten one of them who modestly expected a place in her memory had made an effort to repair the injury with aptness and grace. She had given up pleasures she enjoyed and repose she needed, and had managed to glean entertainment and interesting experience by the way, and in course of time, having occupied for years one of the highest social positions in the land, and done some of the most difficult and laborious work, would retire simply and gracefully, more regretted than regretting, and would look back upon her experience more as an episode in her husband's career than her own.
She was one of the few women who produced in Professor Herrick neither mild perturbation nor mental bewilderment. He had been a friend of her husband's in his youth, and during their residence in Washington it had been his habit to desert his books and entomological specimens once or twice in the season for the purpose of appearing in their parlors. There was a legend that he had once presented himself with a large and valuable beetle pinned to the lapel of his coat, he having absentmindedly placed it in that conspicuous position in mistake for the flower Bertha had suggested he should decorate himself with.
He was among the guests to-night, her hostess told Bertha, as she shook hands with her.
"We were very much pleased to see him, though we do not think he looks very well," she said. "I think you will find him talking to Professor Borrowdale, who has just returned from Central America."
She gave Bertha a kind glance of scrutiny.
"Are you looking very well?" she said. "I am afraid you are not. That is not a good way to begin a season."
"I am afraid," said Bertha, laughing, "that I have not chosen my dress well. Colonel Tredennis told me, a few moments ago, that I ought to be at home."