"I am always worth looking at," she said. "And now you have seen me"—
He was looking at her by this time, and even more sharply than before. It seemed as if he was bent upon reading in her face the answer to the question he had asked of it before, but he evidently did not find it.
"There's something wrong with you," he said. "I don't know what it is. I don't know what to make of you."
"If you could make anything of me but Bertha Amory," she replied, "you might do a service to society; but that is out of the question, and as to there being something wrong with me, there is something wrong with all of us. There is something wrong with Mr. Arbuthnot, he is not enjoying himself; there is something wrong with Senator Planefield, who has been gloomy all the evening."
"Planefield," he said. "Ah! yes, there he is! Here pretty often, isn't he?"
"He is a great friend of Richard's," she replied, with discretion.
"So I have heard," he returned. And then he gave his attention to Planefield for a few minutes, as if he found him also an object of deep interest. After this inspection he turned to Bertha again.
"Well," he said, "I suppose you enjoy all this, or you wouldn't do it?"
"You are not enjoying it," she replied. "It does not exhilarate you as I hoped it would."
"I am out of humor," was his answer. "I told you so. I have just heard something I don't like. I dropped in here to stay five minutes, and take a look at you and see if"—