The season opened with a bang on the first of December. The smart set could barely get six hours in bed from going to parties at all hours. This did not apply to Mrs. Luttrell, who, although she was out every night, did not disturb herself to appear in public until four o’clock in the afternoon. That particular form of barbaric entertainment known as a ladies’ luncheon had no charms for Mrs. Luttrell, because there were no men to be found at them; for this woman, who cherished with an idolatrous recollection the memory of the only man she had ever loved, and who had refused more offers of marriage than any other woman of her day, frankly admitted that she couldn’t enjoy anything without a masculine element in it. And men she contrived to have in plenty, with a success but little inferior to that of Ninon de l’Enclos.

For that reason Richard Baskerville was not only the person Mrs. Luttrell loved best in the world, but was really her most intimate friend. There was nothing Mrs. Luttrell enjoyed so much as a midnight tÊte-À-tÊte over her bedroom fire with Baskerville, he just from his books and she just from her nightly gayety. Mrs. Luttrell scorned a boudoir,—or the modern version of it, a den. She had a huge, old-fashioned bedroom, with an ancient four-poster mahogany bed, with green silk curtains, and a lace valance; and everything in the room was big and square and handsome and comfortable, like the bed. There was a large fireplace, with shining brass fire-dogs and a monumental brass fender; and Mrs. Luttrell frequently admitted that when she got her feet on that fender and her dressing-gown on, she grew so communicative that she would tell the inmost secrets of her soul to the veriest stranger, if he had his feet on the fender at the same time.

It was on a night early in January that Mrs. Luttrell nabbed Baskerville at her door, as she was being let in by the sleepy black butler. Baskerville followed her upstairs into her room, considerately turning his back while the old lady got out of her black-velvet gown, and whisked off her flannel petticoat, into her comfortable dressing-gown—an operation she performed without the least regard for his presence. Then, when her delicate, high-bred feet were on the fender before the glowing wood fire, she said:—

“Now you can turn around—and I’m a great deal more clothed than the women you take down to dinner or dance with at balls.”

“I don’t dance at a great many balls. Let me see—I haven’t danced for—“

“Oh, I know. Well, I’m just from a dinner at Secretary Slater’s, where that ridiculous little Mrs. Hill-Smith, his daughter, was in great feather, and also the Baldwin girl and Anne Clavering.”

“You ought to beg Miss Clavering’s pardon for bracketing her with Mrs. Hill-Smith and Eleanor Baldwin.”

“My dear boy, it would make you die laughing to see the patronizing air Mrs. Hill-Smith and Eleanor Baldwin put on with Anne Clavering. As the Slater family is at least forty years old and the Brentwood-Baldwins quite twenty years old, they regard the Claverings, who have come up within the last six years, very much as the old French nobility regarded the bourgeoisie. But I think Anne Clavering is a match for them. Indeed, she proved herself a match for a much more considerable antagonist—that is, myself—this very night.”

“Have you been impertinent to Miss Clavering?”

“Well, Richard, my dear boy, I am afraid I have been. But it was all the fault of those two foolish creatures, Mrs. Hill-Smith and Eleanor Baldwin. It was in this way. The gentlemen,”—Mrs. Luttrell still used this antique word,—“the gentlemen had come into the drawing-room after dinner—very prim and proper they were after their cigarettes and two glasses of hock. In my time, when the gentlemen came in after dinner they were always as merry as lords and delightfully free: I have been slapped on the back by Daniel Webster at a dinner, when I was sixteen years old. But nothing so agreeable happens now—and there aren’t any Daniel Websters, either. Well, when I was talking to that ridiculous Mrs. Hill-Smith something unluckily started me off upon the new people in Washington. Mrs. Hill-Smith, you know, assumes that she has sixteen quarterings, so she has to grin and bear it when I begin telling about people; and I always say to her, ‘You and I, Mrs. Hill-Smith, who knew some people before 1860.’ Somebody was speaking about Mrs. James Van Cortlandt Skinner’s private chaplain—that woman has added much to the gayety of nations. There’s a story going around that she had a darling of a fight over it, not only with the bishop, but with the bishop’s wife; and I was giving a very amusing account of it, when Anne Clavering quietly remarked that she happened to know that Mrs. Skinner had not spoken of it yet to the bishop. Of course this spoiled my story, and I was a little cross about it. Judge Woodford was present, and he told a pleasant little tale about my grandfather having been very cross on one occasion, and having pulled somebody’s nose, and I said my crossness was a case of atavism on my part. And so it was turned into a joke. When we were leaving I was sorry I had been short with Anne Clavering, so I went up and asked her to come and see me on my next day at home, and to pour tea for me—that I still held to the good old fashion of keeping a day at home and seeing my friends. And what do you think the minx said? She was very sorry, but she had an attack of atavism, too,—her grandfather wasn’t used to afternoon tea and she had never acquired any real taste for it!”

Baskerville laughed delightedly.

“Oh, it wasn’t so clever, after all,” said Mrs. Luttrell, smiling with that unshakable good humor which was the most exasperating thing on earth to all her enemies and her friends alike. “It is just because you’re in love with Anne Clavering; and I think she likes you pretty well, too.”

Baskerville sat up then, sobered in an instant. What Mrs. Luttrell knew or suspected all Washington would shortly know. “Why do you say that?” he asked quietly.

“Because I think it, that’s why. It’s one of the strangest things in the world that people in love think all the rest of the world blind and deaf. And a woman lets her secret out just as readily as a man. I say Anne Clavering likes you. I don’t say she is pining and can’t eat and sleep for you; but I do say she likes you, though. And I feel sorry for the girl—such a family! You ought to see how that divorcÉe, Mrs. Denman, goes on with Count von Kappf, who, I believe, has been sent over here by a syndicate to marry an American heiress. Nobody knows what Anne Clavering has to suffer for the conduct of that sister of hers.”

“And you, who call yourself a Christian, had to add to Miss Clavering’s mortification.”

“Oh, it was only a trifle, and she came out ahead.”

“Anyhow, you shall apologize to her. Do you understand me, Sara Luttrell? You shall apologize, and before me, too.”

“Very well,” replied Mrs. Luttrell, unabashed. “The first time I catch you and Anne Clavering together I’ll apologize.”

Baskerville sat silent for a while as Mrs. Luttrell luxuriously toasted her toes. Presently he said, “So people are kind enough to say that I am in love with Miss Clavering?”

“Yes, indeed. People are always kind enough to say things—and a great many people are saying that you are in love with her. You haven’t escaped notice as much as you thought.”

“I don’t desire to escape notice. And I only hope enough people will say it so it will get to Miss Clavering’s ears. Then she may not be so surprised as to throw me over when—the opportunity comes. I may be a good many sorts of a blamed fool, Sara, but I am not such a fool as to be anything but flattered when my name is associated with Miss Clavering’s.”

“Very decently said. But how are you going to manage about this senatorial investigation—trying to ruin the father as a preliminary to marrying the daughter?”

Baskerville grew grave at once. The investigation was on in earnest. The committee which had been appointed before the adjournment of Congress had begun its sittings directly upon the meeting of Congress, and Baskerville had at once come into prominence as one of the representatives of the Civil Service League. The question of Clavering’s culpability with regard to the land grants was complicated with the open barter and sale of Federal offices, and the Civil Service League had taken it up actively. The League was in no way bound by senatorial courtesy, and it had a formidable array of evidence to produce, which pointed straight to criminal as well as civil indictments. Baskerville found himself in a difficult position. He had gone too far in one direction toward exposing Senator Clavering, and his heart had carried him too far in another direction, for he was at last beginning to realize that he had fallen in love with Anne Clavering—a path upon which a strong man never halts. It is your weakling who falls halfway in love and then stops.

Mrs. Luttrell studied Baskerville keenly. Herself a sentimentalist in disguise, she loved Baskerville the better for doing what she had long dreaded—for she had a woman’s jealousy of another woman’s usurping the first place with this nephew-in-law, who was son, companion, and comrade in one. But at least he did not contemplate foisting a pink-and-white nonentity upon her; Mrs. Luttrell always declared herself afraid of silly women. She not only liked Anne Clavering, but she saw in her a large and generous spirit, who would not, by small artifices, try to come between Baskerville and Mrs. Luttrell. And the ineradicable interest which is every woman’s inalienable right in a love-affair was strong in Mrs. Luttrell’s breast. She began to wish that Baskerville and Anne would marry; and after sitting quite silent for ten minutes watching Baskerville’s moody face, she suddenly got up, went over to him, and smoothing the hair back from his forehead, kissed it tenderly. Two tears dropped upon his brow. Baskerville looked up and took her hands in his. He spoke no word, but he knew that the memory of the man so long dead was poignant still; and Mrs. Luttrell, after a pause, said in a low voice:—

“I hope Anne Clavering will love you as I loved my Richard. And if you can make her as happy as he made me—Good night. I can’t bear to speak much of it, even to you.”

“If any woman ever loves me as you loved my uncle, I should think myself eternally blessed with such love. Good night, Sara dear.”

He kissed her warmly, went out of the room and downstairs and across the garden to his own house, and into his library. The first thing he saw upon the big library table was a mass of documents relating to the K. F. R. land grants. Baskerville pushed them away, and taking up a well-thumbed volume of Theocritus tried to forget himself in the pictures of the fair shining of the Sicilian sun, in the sound of the pipe of Daphnis, in the complainings of the two poor old fishermen lying by night in their wattled cabin on the sand dunes.

All was in vain. His thoughts were no sooner diverted from Anne Clavering than they turned to Clavering and his affairs. How amazing was this man who had rough-hewn his way to a high place, to enormous wealth, to great power, from which he was likely to be thrown headlong into an abyss of shame! Baskerville had very little doubt that, no matter how successful might be the suits against Clavering, he would manage to retain great tangible sums of money. Men of the Clavering type hold on to their money more intelligently than to their supposititious honor. And finding it impossible to get away from his own thoughts, even in books which had heretofore been an unfailing sedative, Baskerville went to bed, and tossed in true lover’s fashion half the remaining night, before he fell into a troubled sleep to dream of Anne Clavering.