The next day was Mrs. Luttrell’s day at home, and in spite of her declared preference for small receptions, a choice little circle of friends, tea and good plain bread and butter, she contrived to have crowds of visitors, resplendent drawing-rooms, and in the dining room a brilliant table, glowing with floral feather beds and sparkling with lights, whereon were served most of the kickshaws which Mrs. Luttrell had so severely animadverted on the day before.

It was a field-day with Mrs. Luttrell. All the Cave-dwellers and all of the smart set seemed to be in evidence at one time or another during the afternoon. The street was blocked with carriages, lackeys stood ten deep around the handsome doors, and the air fluttered with the tissue paper from the many cards that were left. The splendid and unique drawing-rooms were at their best, and Mrs. Luttrell, arrayed in the immortal black-velvet gown, was standing in the centre of the middle drawing-room, dispensing flatteries to the men and civilities to the women with great gusto. Baskerville was present, doing his part as host, helping out the shy people like Eleanor Baldwin’s mother, the handsome, silent Mrs. Brentwood-Baldwin, who was known to be cruelly dragooned by her up-to-date daughter. But there are not many shy people to be found in Washington. Mrs. James Van Cortlandt Skinner was not at all shy when she came sailing in, toward six o’clock, with a very handsome young man, dressed in the height of ecclesiastical elegance. The private chaplain was, at last, an attained luxury.

“My dear Mrs. Luttrell,” she said cooingly, “may I introduce to you the Reverend Father Milward of the Order of St. Hereward?”

Mrs. Luttrell’s handsome mouth widened in a smile which was subject to many interpretations, and she shook hands cordially with Mrs. James Van Cortlandt Skinner’s protÉgÉ. Father Milward himself gave Mrs. Luttrell a far-away, ascetic bow, and then, turning to Baskerville, began discussing with him the status of the English education bill. Father Milward gave it as his solemn opinion that the bill did not go far enough in opposing secular education, and thought that the Dissenters had been dealt with too favorably by it and under it.

Mrs. Van Cortlandt Skinner had felt a little nervous at the way her newest acquisition might be received by Mrs. Luttrell, but had determined to put a bold face upon it. And why should anybody be ashamed of achieving one’s heart’s desire, so long as it is respectable? And what is more respectable and likewise more recherchÉ, than a domestic chaplain? And the Reverend Father Milward had been domestic chaplain to an English duke. Nor had his severance with the ducal household been anything but creditable to Father Milward, for the duke, a very unspiritual person, who kept a domestic chaplain on the same principle as he subscribed to the county hunt, had said that he “wouldn’t stand any more of Milward’s religious fallals, by gad.” The chaplain had therefore discharged the duke, for the young clergyman’s fallals were honest fallals, and he was prepared to go to the stake for them. Instead of the crown of martyrdom, however, he had fallen into Mrs. James Van Cortlandt Skinner’s arms, so to speak; and he found it an ecclesiastical paradise of luxury and asceticism, God and mammon, full of the saintliness of the world.

Before Mrs. Van Cortlandt Skinner had a chance to tell what position the Reverend Father Milward held in her family, Mrs. Luttrell said to her, aside: “So you’ve got him! I thought you’d get the upper hand of the bishop. The fact is you’re cleverer than any of the Newport people I’ve heard of yet. They’ve got their tiaras and their sea-going yachts and they have the Emperor to dinner, but not one of them has a private acolyte, much less a full-grown chaplain. You’ve done something really original this time, my dear.”

Mrs. Van Cortlandt Skinner did not know exactly how Mrs. Luttrell meant to be taken, but smiled faintly and said: “You can’t imagine, my dear Mrs. Luttrell, the blessed privilege of having Father Milward under my roof. He has been with me a week, and every day we have had matins, compline, and evensong. I have had the billiard room turned into a chapel temporarily, and it is really sweet; but of course I shall have an early English chapel built at each of my houses. I have plenty of ground for a chapel at my Washington house. My servants have been most attentive at the services, and when Lionel or Harold is absent my butler, a very high churchman, acts as clerk. It is really edifying to see and hear him. You know persons in very humble walks of life sometimes possess great graces and virtues.”

“So I have heard,” replied Mrs. Luttrell, earnestly.

“I am determined to take Father Milward everywhere with me. I want his holy influence to be shed in the best society. It is beautiful to see him with Lionel and Harold. I hope that one or both of them will develop a vocation for the priesthood. I could do so much for them—build them beautiful parish houses and everything. If one of them should wish to organize a brotherhood, in America, as you once suggested, I would build a beautiful brotherhood house at my place on the Hudson. To give to the Church is such a privilege, and to give to these beautiful and poetic orders which our beloved Mother Church in England is organizing has a peculiar charm for me.”

“I see it has,” answered Mrs. Luttrell; “and if you have everything else you want, why not get a domestic chaplain, or a couple if you like, just as the Empress Elizabeth of Russia used to get her a new lover whenever she wanted one?”

Mrs. Skinner gave a little start at this. She was a guileless woman and never knew when people were joking unless they told her so. She had never heard of the Empress Elizabeth, and moreover she was sincerely afraid of Mrs. Luttrell.

“And,” continued Mrs. Luttrell, “now that you have walloped the bishop of the diocese, for I understand that he made a terrible row about the domestic chaplain, I would, if I were in your place, get an archbishop to preside over the Church in the United States. The archbishop is clearly the next move in the game, after the domestic chaplain. One wants a little elegance now in religion, you know, and an archbishop is just twice as stylish as a mere bishop; and in time”—Mrs. Luttrell laid her hand approvingly on Mrs. Van Cortlandt Skinner’s imperial sable boa—“Lionel or Harold may live to be Archbishop Skinner. There isn’t any reason in the world why you people who have loads of money shouldn’t have everything you want. Don’t forget that, my dear Mrs. Skinner.”

Mrs. Skinner felt that she was being trifled with; so she laughed a little and moved away, saying: “I see Bishop Slater, the secretary’s brother, across the room, and I must speak to him. I think the secretary is a dear, and so is the bishop, so nice and high in his Church views.”

Mrs. Luttrell turned to face an accusing mentor in Richard Baskerville, who had heard a part of the “trying out” of Mrs. James Van Cortlandt Skinner; but before he could speak he caught sight of Anne Clavering entering the wide doors. He had not thought to see her that day, feeling that what had passed between them in the brougham would keep her away from Mrs. Luttrell’s as a place where she would be certain to meet him; for Anne Clavering had all the delicate reserve which a man would wish in the woman he loves. Therefore, not expecting to see her, Baskerville had early in the day despatched to her a basket of violets and a brief note, in which he asked permission to speak at once to her father. He had received no reply, but expected one before he slept. Anne’s appearance, however, in Mrs. Luttrell’s drawing-room surprised him; she evidently sought him, and this she would not be likely to do unless she were in some emergency.

To Baskerville’s keen eye her face, glowing with an unusual color, her eyes, which were restlessly bright, betrayed some inward agitation. She was very beautifully dressed in velvet and furs, with more of magnificence than she usually permitted herself; and her white-gloved hand played nervously with a superb emerald pendant that hung around her neck by a jewelled chain. Baskerville was the first person who greeted her, and Mrs. Luttrell was the next.

“This is kind of you,” said the latter, all sweetness and affability. “It shows what a nice disposition you have, to come to me to-day, after the way my nephew made me kowtow to you yesterday. Richard, give Miss Clavering a cup of tea.”

Baskerville escorted Anne through the splendid suite of rooms, each speaking right and left and being stopped often to exchange a word with a friend or acquaintance. People smiled after the pair of them, as they do after a pair of suspected lovers. When they came to the high-arched lobby that led into the dining room, Baskerville opened a side door, partly concealed by a screen and a great group of palms, and showed Anne into a little breakfast room, which opened with glass doors on the garden. A hard-coal fire burned redly in the grate, and the dying sunset poured its last splendors through a huge square window. Baskerville shut the door, and Anne and he were as much alone as if they had the whole house to themselves.

“I have practised a gross fraud upon you about the tea,” said he, smiling; “but here is a chance for a few minutes alone with you—a chance I shall take whenever I can get it.” He would have taken her hand, but something in her face stopped him. She had protested and denied him the day before, when he told her of his love; but it had not stood materially in his way. Now, however, he saw in an instant there was something of great import that made a barrier between them.

“I wished very much to see you alone and soon; I came here to-day for that purpose,” she said. She spoke calmly, but Baskerville saw that it was with difficulty she restrained her agitation. “Yesterday,” she went on, “I told you what I feared about my father—“

“And I told you,” Baskerville interrupted, “that I would marry you if I could, no matter who or what your father is.”

“You were most generous. But you don’t know what I know about my father—I only found it out myself last night. I had an interview with him. There was something in a newspaper about his divorcing my mother.”

“If he does and you will marry me, I shall engage to treat your mother with the same respect and attention I should my own. Mrs. Clavering is one of the best of women, and I have the greatest regard for her.”

Anne raised to him a glorified, grateful face. The poor, despised mother for whom she had fought and was still fighting, the helpless, unfortunate woman who seemed to be in everybody’s way except in hers—the offer of kindness and consideration went to Anne Clavering’s heart. She wished to say something in the way of thanks to Baskerville, but instead she burst into a sudden passion of tears. Baskerville, with a lover’s ardor, would have comforted her upon his breast, but she kept him at a distance.

“No, no!” she pleaded, weeping, “hear me out—let me tell you all.” Baskerville, although at her side, did not perforce so much as touch her hand. Anne continued, strangely recovering her calmness as she proceeded: “I can’t repeat all my father said—I have neither the strength nor the time now; but he told me there was an—an invalidity about his marriage to my mother. She, poor soul, knew nothing of it, for—for our sakes, his children. But it was no marriage. And last night he told me plainly that if I persuaded my mother to resist the divorce, he can prove that she never was—that we are—” She stopped. Her tears had ceased to flow, her face was deathly pale; a heart-breaking composure had taken the place of her emotion.

Baskerville, however, had become slightly agitated. He comprehended instantly what she meant. She was not even the legitimate child of James Clavering. Small as the credit of his name might be, it was not hers. Baskerville, as a man of honorable lineage, had a natural shrinking from ignoble birth, but it did not blind him to the inherent honor in Anne Clavering nor turn his heart away from her. He recovered his coolness in a moment or two and was about to speak, when she forestalled him hurriedly.

“So, you see, you must forget all that happened yesterday. I thank you a thousand times for—for—what you once felt for me. If things were different—if I were—but, as you see, it is quite impossible now.”

“And do you suppose,” said Baskerville, after a pause, “that I would give you up—that I could give you up? I am afraid you don’t yet know what love is.”

Their conversation had gone on in tones so low that they might have been discussing the affairs of total strangers. Baskerville made no attempt to take her hand, to beguile her with endearments. It was a moment solemn for both of them, and Baskerville spoke with the calm appeal of a noble and steadfast love. It was not the sweet seduction of passion, but the earnest claim and covenant of love upon which he relied.

Anne remained with her eyes fixed on the floor. Baskerville said no more. He scorned to plead his right, and his silence wrought for him far more than any spoken words. His manner was one of questioning reproach, a reproach most dear to a loving and high-minded woman. The meaning of it came softly but inevitably upon Anne Clavering. It was no light sacrifice for a man of sensitive honor, of flawless repute, to link himself in any way with a woman dowered as Anne Clavering was dowered by her father’s evil-doing, but Baskerville reckoned it as nothing when weighed in the balance against his honorable love. At last the whole beauty of his conduct dawned full upon her; Baskerville knew the very instant when she grasped all that he meant. The color began to mount to her pale cheeks; she sighed deeply and raised her eyes, now softly radiant, to his face.

“You are very, very generous,” she said. “It is good to have known a man so generous, and it is sweeter than I can tell you to have been loved by such a man. But I can be generous, also. It is too great a sacrifice for you. I cannot accept it.”

To this Baskerville only replied: “Tell me but this—one word will settle it forever. Do you love me?”

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Anne remained silent, but the silences of a woman who loves are more eloquent than words. The next minute she was fast in Baskerville’s arms, who would not let her go; and they had a foretaste of Paradise, such as only those know whose love is mingled with sacrifice, which is the ultimate height of the soul’s tenderness. But their time was of necessity short, and what Anne had told Baskerville required instant consideration. When Anne would have persisted in her refusal Baskerville would not listen, but turned to the matter of her interview with Clavering.

“This is a question which must be met at once, because I believe your father quite capable of carrying out his threat. And your mother must be the first one to be considered. What do you think she would wish?”

It was the first time in her life that Anne Clavering had ever heard any one say that her mother was to be considered at all. A great wave of gratitude surged up in her heart—the poor, helpless, ignorant, loving mother, who had no friend but her—and Baskerville. She looked at him with eyes shining and brimming and laid a timid, tender hand upon his shoulder.

“I ought not to accept your love—but—“

“You can’t prevent it,” replied Baskerville.

“Then, if gratitude—“

But when lovers talk of gratitude it means more kisses. The pale dusk of winter now filled the room, and there was no light except the red glow of the fire. Baskerville would have asked nothing better in life than an hour in that quiet, twilighted room, nor would Anne either; but, woman-like, Anne remembered that there were some other persons in the world besides themselves, and made as if to go, nor would she heed Baskerville’s pleadings to remain longer.

As they reached the door Baskerville said: “Think over what you wish me to do, and write me when you determine. Of course I must see your father immediately. And we must take my aunt into our confidence, for it is through her that we must meet.”

Poor Anne had not had much time for that sweet trifling which is the joy of lovers, but at the idea of Mrs. Luttrell being taken into any one’s confidence a faint smile came to her quivering lips. “The whole town will know all about it.”

“No, I can frighten my aunt, and she shan’t tell until we are ready.”

Anne’s cheeks were flaming, and she said, as all women do who have to face inspection directly after a love scene, “If I could but get away without being seen.”

“It is easy enough; this glass door opens.”

Baskerville led her through the glass door into the garden and around to the front of the house, where in the throng of arriving and departing visitors not even the lynx-eyed Jeems Yellowplush who opened the brougham door suspected that Miss Clavering had not walked straight from Mrs. Luttrell’s drawing-room.

Anne lay back in the carriage, lost in a dream of love and gratitude. All her life long she had fought alone and single-handed for the poor, oppressed mother. She knew perfectly well all her mother’s ignorance, her awkward manners, but Anne knew also the patience, the goodness, the forgiving and unselfish nature which lay under that unpromising exterior. Not one point of Baskerville’s conduct was lost on Anne Clavering, and if love and gratitude could repay him, she meant that he should be repaid. And in the coming catastrophes she would have Baskerville’s strong arm and masculine good sense to depend upon.

She had read the newspapers attentively, and she believed that her father and his associates would be found guilty of all that was alleged against them; and she knew that the divorce was a fixed thing, not to be altered by anybody. That of itself might be expected, in the ordinary course, to exile the family from Washington, but Anne doubted it. Élise and Lydia would not have delicacy enough to go away if they wished to remain, and their fondness for the smaller fry of the diplomatic corps was quite strong enough to keep them in Washington when it would be better for them to live elsewhere. Reginald, in spite of his weakness and narrowness, had a sense of dignity that would make him keep out of the public eye.

For herself, Anne had determined, before her interview with Baskerville, that a quiet home in the little Iowa town where her mother was born and bred would be the place for her mother and herself; and she had thought with calm resignation of the change in her life from the gayety and brilliance of Washington to the quiet seclusion of a country town. It would not be all loss, however, for her path in Washington had not been entirely roses. Washington is a place of great and varied interests, where one may live any sort of life desired; and it is not easy to adapt those who have lived there to any other spot in America. But now these words of Richard Baskerville’s, his manly, compelling love, had changed all that for her. She felt it to be her destiny—her happy destiny—to live with him in Washington. His name and high repute would protect her. She would not ask of him to have her mother always with her, although a more submissive and unobtrusive creature never lived than Mrs. Clavering. It would be enough if she could pass a part of the year with Anne, while Reginald took care of her the other part, and both of them would vie with each other in doing their duty. Her heart swelled whenever she thought of the consideration Baskerville had shown toward Mrs. Clavering; it would make the poor woman happy to know it, for this woman, used to the bread of humiliation, keenly felt the smallest attention paid her. And then Anne fell into a sweet dream of delight, and was happy in spite of herself. She came down from heaven only when the carriage stopped in front of the great stone house of Senator Clavering.

At the same hour Mrs. Luttrell sat before the fire in the great empty drawing-room, from which the guests had just departed. Mrs. Luttrell was burning with curiosity to know what had become of Baskerville and Anne Clavering when they disappeared so mysteriously—for Baskerville had not returned, either. The fact is, while Anne was lost in a soft ecstasy, Baskerville, smoking furiously at a big black cigar, was walking aimlessly about the streets, his heart beating high. He looked at his watch. It was seven o’clock, and it occurred to him that it was time to go back to Mrs. Luttrell and make provision for future meetings with Anne Clavering and, possibly, their marriage from Mrs. Luttrell’s house, if circumstances should follow as he expected.

When he walked in, Mrs. Luttrell’s greeting was, “Where’s Anne Clavering?”

“Safe at home, I trust,” replied Baskerville, throwing the end of his cigar into the fire.

“And what became of you, pray, when you two went prancing off, and never came back?”

“I took Miss Clavering into the morning-room.”

“You did, eh?”

“I did.”

“And what happened in the morning-room?”

“I decline to state, except that Miss Clavering and I are to be married—perhaps in this house. Senator Clavering, you know, and I are at feud, and the coming revelations about him make it very likely that he won’t have a house here very long”—Baskerville had in mind Clavering’s divorce—“and our meetings, Miss Clavering’s and mine, are to take place under your roof, with yourself to play gooseberry. Even if you are due at the biggest dinner going at the house of the smartest of the smart and the newest of the new, you shall stay here, if we have to chain you up.”

“Upon my word!”

“And you are not to open your mouth to a living being about what I am telling you, until I give you permission. I know your idea of a secret, Sara Luttrell—it means something that is worth telling. But if you let one ray of light leak out, I shall never speak to you again, and shall tell your age all over Washington.”

Mrs. Luttrell looked at Baskerville with admiring eyes. “That’s the way your uncle used to talk to me. No one else in the world ever did it, except you and him.”

“Now, will you obey me?”

“You are an impudent rogue. Yes, I will obey you.”

“Then go to your desk this minute and write Miss Clavering a note offering the hospitality of your roof and your services as chaperon whenever she requires it; and mind you make it a very affectionate note.”

Baskerville led Mrs. Luttrell to her desk, where she wrote her note. “Will this do?” she asked, and read to him:—

“Dear Anne Clavering: My nephew, Richard Baskerville, tells me you and he are to be married, and as he is at feud with your father he can’t go to your house. Therefore you must come to mine. I need not say that my services as chaperon are at your disposal. I think you know that I am a sincere person, and when I tell you that I think Richard Baskerville would do well to marry you even if you hadn’t a rag to your back, you may be sure I think so. And you will do well to marry him. He is like another Richard who died long ago—the husband of my youth.

“Affectionately yours,

“Sara Luttrell.”

“That will do,” replied Baskerville, and taking Mrs. Luttrell’s small, white hand in his he kissed it, kissed it so with the air and look and manner of the man dead fifty years and more that Mrs. Luttrell’s bright old eyes filled with sudden tears—she, the woman who was supposed to have been born and to have lived without a heart.