Mrs. Amory did not receive on New Year's day. The season had well set in before she arrived in Washington. One morning in January Mrs. Sylvestre, sitting alone, reading, caught sight of the little coupÉ as it drew up before the carriage-step, and, laying aside her book, reached the parlor door in time to meet Bertha as she entered it. She took both her hands and drew her toward the fire, still holding them.

"Why did I not know you had returned?" she said. "When did you arrive?"

"Last night," Bertha answered. "You see I come to you early."

It was a cold day and she was muffled in velvet and furs. She sat down, loosened her wrap and let it slip backward, and as its sumptuous fulness left her figure it revealed it slender to fragility, and showed that the outline of her cheek had lost all its roundness. She smiled faintly, meeting Agnes' anxious eyes.

"Don't look at me," she said. "I am not pretty. I have been ill. You heard I was not well in Newport? It was a sort of low fever, and I am not entirely well yet. Malaria, you know, is always troublesome. But you are very well?"

"Yes, I am well," Agnes replied.

"And you begin to like Washington again?"

"I began last winter."

"How did you enjoy the spring? You were here until the end of June."

"It was lovely."

"And now you are here once more, and how pretty everything about you is!" Bertha said, glancing around the room. "And you are ready to be happy all winter until June again. Do you know, you look happy. Not excitably happy, but gently, calmly happy, as if the present were enough for you."

"It is," said Agnes, "I don't think I want any future."

"It would be as well to abolish it if one could," Bertha answered; "but it comes—it comes!"

She sat and looked at the fire a few seconds under the soft shadow of her lashes, and then spoke again.

"As for me," she said, "I am going to give dinner-parties to Senator Planefield's friends."

"Bertha!" exclaimed Agnes.

"Yes," said Bertha, nodding gently. "It appears somehow that Richard belongs to Senator Planefield, and, as I belong to Richard, why, you see"—

She ended with a dramatic little gesture, and looked at Agnes once more.

"It took me some time to understand it," she said. "I am not quite sure that I understand it quite thoroughly even now. It is a little puzzling, or, perhaps, I am dull of comprehension. At all events, Richard has talked to me a great deal. It is plainly my duty to be agreeable and hospitable to the people he wishes to please and bring in contact with each other."

"And those people?" asked Agnes.

"They are political men: they are members of committees, members of the House, members of the Senate; and their only claim to existence in our eyes is that they are either in favor of or opposed to a certain bill not indirectly connected with the welfare of the owners of Westoria lands."

"Bertha," said Agnes, quickly, "you are not yourself."

"Thank you," was the response, "that is always satisfactory, but the compliment would be more definite if you told me who I happened to be. But I can tell you that I am that glittering being, the female lobbyist. I used to wonder last winter if I was not on the verge of it; but now I know. I wonder if they all begin as innocently as I did, and find the descent—isn't it a descent?—as easy and natural. I feel queer, but not exactly disreputable. It is merely a matter of being a dutiful wife and smiling upon one set of men instead of another. Still, I am slightly uncertain as to just how disreputable I am. I was beginning to be quite reconciled to my atmosphere until I saw Colonel Tredennis, and I confess he unsettled my mind and embarrassed me a little in my decision."

"You have seen him already?"

"Accidentally, yes. He did not know I had returned, and came to see Richard. He is quite intimate with Richard now. He entered the parlor and found me there. I do not think he was glad to see me. I left him very soon."

She drew off her glove, and smoothed it out upon her knee, with a thin and fragile little hand upon which the rings hung loosely. Agnes bent forward and involuntarily laid her own hand upon it.

"Dear," she said.

Bertha hurriedly lifted her eyes.

"What I wish to say," she said, "was that the week after next we give a little dinner to Senator Blundel, and I wanted to be sure I might count on you. If you are there—and Colonel Tredennis—you will give it an unprofessional aspect, which is what we want. But perhaps you will refuse to come?"

"Bertha," said Mrs. Sylvestre, "I will be with you at any time—at all times—you wish for or need me."

"Yes," said Bertha, reflecting upon her a moment, "I think you would."

She got up and kissed her lightly and without effusion, and then Agnes rose, too, and they stood together.

"You were always good," Bertha said. "I think life has made you better instead of worse. It is not so always. Things are so different—everything seems to depend upon circumstances. What is good in me would be far enough from your standards to be called wickedness."

She paused abruptly, and Agnes felt that she did so to place a check upon herself; she had seen her do it before. When she spoke again it was in an entirely different tone, and the remaining half-hour of her visit was spent in the discussion of every-day subjects. Agnes listened, and replied to her with a sense of actual anguish. She could have borne better to have seen her less self-controlled; or she fancied so, at least. The summer had made an alteration in her, which it was almost impossible to describe. Every moment revealed some new, sad change in her, and yet she sat and talked commonplaces, and was bright, and witty, and epigrammatic until the last.

"When we get our bill through," she said, with a little smile, just before her departure, "I am to go abroad for a year,—for two, for three, if I wish. I think that is the bribe which has been offered me. One must always be bribed, you know."

As she stood at the window watching the carriage drive away, Agnes was conscious of a depression which was very hard to bear. The brightness of her own atmosphere seemed to have become heavy,—the sun hid itself behind the drifting, wintry clouds,—she glanced around her room with a sense of dreariness. Something carried her back to the memories which were the one burden of her present life.

"Such grief cannot enter a room and not leave its shadow behind it," she said. And she put her hand against the window-side, and leaned her brow upon it sadly. It was curious, she thought, the moment after, that the mere sight of a familiar figure should bring such a sense of comfort with it as did the sight of the one she saw approaching. It was that of Laurence Arbuthnot, who came with a business communication for Mrs. Merriam, having been enabled, by chance, to leave his work for an hour. He held a roll of music in one hand and a bunch of violets in the other, and when he entered the room was accompanied by the fresh fragrance of the latter offering.

Agnes made a swift involuntary movement toward him.

"Ah!" she said, "I could scarcely believe that it was you."

He detected the emotion in her manner and tone at once.

"Something has disturbed you," he said. "What is it?"

"I have seen Bertha," she answered, and the words had a sound of appeal in them, which she herself no more realized or understood than she comprehended the impulse which impelled her to speak.

"She has been here! She looks so ill—so worn. Everything is so sad! I"—

She stopped and stood looking at him.

"Must I go away?" he said, quietly. "Perhaps you would prefer to be alone. I understand what you mean, I think."

"Oh, no!" she said, impulsively, putting out her hand. "Don't go. I am unhappy. It was—it was a relief to see you."

And when she sank on the sofa, he took a seat near her and laid the violets on her lap, and there was a faint flush on his face.

The little dinner, which was the first occasion of Senator Blundel's introduction to the Amory establishment, was a decided success.

"We will make it a success," Bertha had said. "It must be one." And there was a ring in her voice which was a great relief to her husband.

"It will be one," he said. "There is no fear of your failing when you begin in this way." And his spirits rose to such an extent that he became genial and fascinating once more, and almost forgot his late trials and uncertainties. He had always felt great confidence in Bertha.

On the afternoon of the eventful day Bertha did not go out. She spent the hours between luncheon and the time for dressing with her children. Once, as he passed the open door of the nursery, Richard saw her sitting upon the carpet, building a house of cards, while Jack, and Janey, and Meg sat about her enchanted. A braid of her hair had become loosened and hung over her shoulder; her cheeks were flushed by the fire; she looked almost like a child herself, with her air of serious absorbed interest in the frail structure growing beneath her hands.

"Won't that tire you?" Richard asked.

She glanced up with a smile.

"No," she said, "it will rest me."

He heard her singing to them afterward, and later, when she went to her dressing-room, he heard the pretty lullaby die away gradually as she moved through the corridor.

When she appeared again she was dressed for dinner, and came in buttoning her glove, and at the sight of her he uttered an exclamation of pleasure.

"What a perfect dress!" he said. "What is the idea? There must be one."

She paused and turned slowly round so that he might obtain the full effect.

"You should detect it," she replied. "It is meant to convey one."

"It has a kind of dove-like look," he said.

She faced him again.

"That is it," she said, serenely. "In the true artist spirit, I have attired myself with a view to expressing the perfect candor and simplicity of my nature. Should you find it possible to fear or suspect me of ulterior motives—if you were a senator, for instance?"

"Ah, come now!" said Richard, not quite so easily, "that is nonsense! You have no ulterior motives."

She opened her plumy, dove-colored fan and came nearer him.

"There is nothing meretricious about me," she said.

"I am softly clad in dove color; a few clusters of pansies adorn me; I am covered from throat to wrists; I have not a jewel about me. Could the effect be better?"

"No, it could not," he replied, but suddenly he felt a trifle uncomfortable again, and wondered what was hidden behind the inscrutable little gaze she afterwards fixed upon the fire.

But when Blundel appeared, which he did rather early, he felt relieved again. Nothing could have been prettier than her greeting of him, or more perfect in its attainment of the object of setting him at his ease. It must be confessed that he was not entirely at his ease when he entered, his experience not having been of a nature to develop in him any latent love for general society. He had fought too hard a fight to leave him much time to know women well, and his superficial knowledge of them made him a trifle awkward, as it occasionally renders other men astonishingly bold. In a party of men all his gifts displayed themselves; in the presence of women he was afraid that less substantial fellows had the advantage of him,—men who could not tell half so good a story or make half so exhilarating a joke. As to this special dinner he had not been particularly anxious to count himself among the guests, and was not very certain as to how Planefield had beguiled him into accepting the invitation.

But ten minutes after he had entered the room he began to feel mollified. Outside the night was wet and unpleasant, and not calculated to improve a man's temper; the parlors glowing with fire-light and twinkling wax candles were a vivid and agreeable contrast to the sloppy rawness. The slender, dove-colored figure, with its soft, trailing draperies, assumed more definitely pleasant proportions, and in his vague, inexperienced, middle-aged fashion he felt the effect of it. She had a nice way, this little woman, he decided; no nonsense or airs and graces about her: an easy manner, a gay little laugh. He did not remember exactly afterward what it was she said which first wakened him up, but he found himself laughing and greatly amused, and when he made a witticism he felt he had reason to be proud of, the gay little peal of laughter which broke forth in response had the most amazingly exhilarating effect upon him, and set him upon his feet for the evening. Women seldom got all the flavor of his jokes. He had an idea that some of them were a little afraid of them and of him, too. The genuine mirth in Bertha's unstudied laughter was like wine to him, and was better than the guffaws of a dozen men, because it had a finer and a novel flavor. After the joke and the laugh the ice was melted, and he knew that he was in the humor to distinguish himself.

Planefield discovered this the moment he saw him, and glanced at Richard, who was brilliant with good spirits.

"She's begun well," he said, when he had an opportunity to speak to him. "I never saw him in a better humor. She's pleased him somehow. Women don't touch him usually."

"She will end better," said Richard. "He pleases her."

He did not displease her, at all events. She saw the force and humor of his stalwart jokes, and was impressed by the shrewd, business-like good-nature which betrayed nothing. When he began to enjoy himself she liked the genuineness of his enjoyment all the more because it was a personal matter with him, and he seemed to revel in it.

"He enjoys himself," was her mental comment, "really himself, not exactly the rest of us, except as we stimulate him, and make him say good things."

Among the chief of her gifts had always been counted the power of stimulating people, and making them say their best things, and she made the most of this power now. She listened with her brightest look, she uttered her little exclamations of pleasure and interest at exactly the right moment, and the gay ring of her spontaneous sounding laugh was perfection. Miss Varien, who was one of her guests, sat and regarded her with untempered admiration.

"Your wife," she said to Amory, in an undertone, "is simply incomparable. It is not necessary to tell you that, of course; but it strikes me with fresh force this evening. She really seems to enjoy things. That air of gay, candid delight is irresistible. It makes her seem to that man like a charming little girl—a harmless, bright, sympathetic little girl. How he likes her!"

When she went in to dinner with him, and he sat by her side, he liked her still more. He had never been in better spirits in his life; he had never said so many things worth remembering; he had never heard such sparkling and vivacious talk as went on round this particular table. It never paused or lagged. There was Amory, all alight and stirred by every conversational ripple which passed him; there was Miss Varien, scintillating and casting off showers of sparks in the prettiest and most careless fashion; there was Laurence Arbuthnot, doing his share without any apparent effort, and appreciating his neighbors to the full; there was Mrs. Sylvestre, her beautiful eyes making speech almost superfluous, and Mrs. Merriam, occasionally casting into the pool some neatly weighted pebble, which sent its circles to the shore; and in the midst of the coruscations Blundel found himself, somehow, doing quite his portion of the illumination. Really these people and their dinner-party pleased him wonderfully well, and he was far from sorry that he had come, and far from sure that he should not come again if he were asked. He was shrewd enough, too, to see how much the success of everything depended upon his own little companion at the head of the table, and, respecting success beyond all things, after the manner of his kind, he liked her all the better for it. There was something about her which, as Miss Varien had said, made him feel that she was like a bright, sympathetic little girl, and engendered a feeling of fatherly patronage which was entirely comfortable. But, though she rather led others to talk than talked herself, he noticed that she said a sharp thing now and then; and he liked that, too, and was greatly amused by it. He liked women to be sharp, if they were not keen enough to interfere with masculine prerogatives. There was only one person in the company he did not find exhilarating, and that was a large, brown-faced fellow, who sat next to Mrs. Merriam, and said less than might have been expected of him, though, when he spoke, his remarks were well enough in their way. Blundel mentioned him afterward to Bertha when they returned to the parlor.

"That colonel, who is he?" he asked her. "I didn't catch his name exactly. Handsome fellow; but he'd be handsomer if"—

"It is the part of wisdom to stop you," said Bertha, "and tell you that he is a sort of cousin of mine, and his perfections are such as I regard with awe. His name is Colonel Tredennis, and you have read of him in the newspapers."

"What!" he exclaimed, turning his sharp little eyes upon Tredennis,—"the Indian man? I'm glad you told me that. I want to talk to him." And, an opportunity being given him, he proceeded to do so with much animation, ruffling his stiff hair up at intervals in his interest, his little eyes twinkling like those of some alert animal.

He left the house late and in the best of humors. He had forgotten for the time being all questions of bills and subsidies. Nothing had occurred to remind him of such subjects. Their very existence seemed a trifle problematical, or, rather, perhaps it seemed desirable that it should be so.

"I feel," he said to Planefield, as he was shrugging himself into his overcoat, "as if I had rather missed it by not coming here before."

"You were asked," answered Planefield.

"So I was," he replied, attacking the top button of the overcoat. "Well, the next time I am asked I suppose I shall come."

Then he gave his attention to the rest of the buttons.

"A man in public life ought to see all sides of his public," he said, having disposed of the last one. "Said some good things, didn't they? The little woman isn't without a mind of her own, either. When is it she receives?"

"Thursdays," said Planefield.

"Ah, Thursdays."

And they went out in company.

Her guests having all departed, Bertha remained for a few minutes in the parlor. Arbuthnot and Tredennis went out last, and as the door closed upon them she looked at Richard.

"Well?" she said.

"Well!" exclaimed Richard. "It could not have been better!"

"Couldn't it?" she said, looking down a little meditatively.

"No," he responded, with excellent good cheer, "and you see how simple it was, and—and how unnecessary it is to exaggerate it and call it by unpleasant names. What we want is merely to come in contact with these people, and show them how perfectly harmless we are, and that when the time comes they may favor us without injury to themselves or any one else. That's it in a nutshell."

"We always say 'us,' don't we?" said Bertha,—"as if we were part-proprietors of the Westoria lands ourselves. It is a little confusing, don't you think so?"

She paused and looked up with one of her sudden smiles.

"Still I don't feel exactly sure that I have been—but no, I am not to call it lobbying, am I? What must I call it? It really ought to have a name."

"Don't call it anything," said Richard, faintly conscious of his dubiousness again.

"Why, what a good idea!" she answered. "What a good way of getting round a difficulty—not to give it a name! It almost obliterates it, doesn't it? It is an actual inspiration. We won't call it anything. There is so much in a name—too much, on the whole, really. But—without giving it a name—I have behaved pretty well and advanced our—your—whose interests?"

"Everybody's," he replied, with an effort at lightness. "Mine particularly. I own that my view of the matter is a purely selfish one. There is a career before me, you know, if all goes well."

He detected at once the expression of gentleness which softened her eyes as she watched him.

"You always wanted a career, didn't you?" she said.

"It isn't pleasant," he said, "for a man to know that he is not a success."

"If I can give you your career," she said, "you shall have it, Richard. It is a simpler thing than I thought, after all." And she went upstairs to her room, stopping on the way to spend a few minutes in the nursery.