It was the gayest season Washington had ever known. There was a continuous round of entertaining at the White House, unofficial as well as official. The different embassies vied with one another in the number and splendor of their festivities; and the smart set entered into a merry war among themselves as to which should throw open their doors oftenest, collect the largest number of guests, and make the most lavish and overpowering display of luxury.

The Claverings did their part, chiefly engineered by Clavering himself, and abetted by Élise and Lydia. Clavering had good reason to suspect that the report of the investigating committee would be ready within the month. It was now the middle of January. Shrove Tuesday came on the fourteenth of February, St. Valentine’s Day, and this was the evening selected for the grand ball and musical which were to complete the season. Other musicals had been given in Washington, but none like this; other balls, but this was meant to surpass them all. It had heretofore been enough to get artists from the Metropolitan Opera in New York; it remained for Clavering to import a couple of singers from Paris for the one occasion. A Hungarian band, touring America, was held over a steamer in order to come to Washington and play at the ball. The shops of Vienna were ransacked for favors for the cotillon; and the champagne to be served came from a king’s cellars.

All this Anne Clavering regarded with disgust and aversion. She felt sure that her father was soon to be hurled from public life, and deservedly so. Her mother’s health was giving her grave alarm. She was at all times opposed to the excess of luxury and fashion which delighted the pagan souls of Élise and Lydia, and now it was an additional mortification to her on Baskerville’s account. He, she felt convinced, was conscious of the brazen effrontery, the shocking bad taste, of it all, and considerate as he was in not speaking of it, her soul was filled with shame to suppose what he thought. She began to hate the lavish luxury in which she dwelt, and looked forward eagerly to the time when she could live modestly and quietly in a house not so grand as to excite the transports of all the society correspondents who got a sight of its stupendous splendors.

Mrs. Clavering’s illness, though slight, continued, and gave Anne a very good excuse for withdrawing somewhat from general society. And it also gave her time for those charming meetings at Mrs. Luttrell’s house, where she and Richard Baskerville tasted the true joy of living. Mrs. Luttrell nobly redeemed her promise, and would have sent every day for Anne to come to tea. As Mrs. Luttrell did not often dine at home without guests, the best tÊte-À-tÊte she could offer the lovers was tea in the little morning-room by the firelight. But Anne, with natural modesty, did not always accept Mrs. Luttrell’s urgent invitations. When she did, however, she and Baskerville always had an enchanted hour to themselves in the dusk, while Mrs. Luttrell considerately disappeared, to take the half hour’s beauty sleep which she declared essential, during some part of every day, for the preservation of her charms.

The lovers also met more than once at the Thorndykes’, at little dinners À quatre. Mrs. Thorndyke would write a note to Anne, asking her on various pleas to come and dine with Thorndyke and herself; and as soon as Anne had accepted there would be a frantic call over the telephone for Thorndyke, in which Mrs. Thorndyke would direct him at the peril of his life to go immediately in search of Baskerville and to bring him home to dinner. And Thorndyke, like the obedient American husband, would do as he was bidden, and produce Baskerville with great punctuality. How far Constance Thorndyke’s own acute perceptions were accountable for this, and how far Mrs. Luttrell’s incurable propensity for taking the world into her confidence, nobody could tell. At all events, it made four people happy; and if anything could have made Baskerville and Anne more in love with the ideal of marriage it was to see the serene happiness, the charming home life, of Senator and Mrs. Thorndyke.

Baskerville had not ceased to press for an early date for his marriage, but Mrs. Clavering’s indisposition and the position of Clavering’s affairs deferred the actual making of the arrangements. It was to be a very simple wedding, Anne stipulated; and Baskerville, with more than the average man’s dread of a ceremony full of display, agreed promptly. Some morning, when Mrs. Clavering was well, Anne and he would be quietly married, go from the church to the train, and after a few days return to Baskerville’s house. And Anne promised herself, and got Baskerville to promise her, the indulgence of a quiet domestic life—a thing she had not known since the golden shower descended upon James Clavering.

Clavering had said nothing to Anne in regard to Baskerville’s interview with him, nor had the father and daughter exchanged one word with each other, beyond the ordinary civilities of life, since that midnight conversation in which Mr. Clavering had announced his intention of getting a divorce. Neither had he said anything to Mrs. Clavering, and his plans were entirely unknown to his family. By extraordinary good fortune not the smallest suspicion fell on the pale, handsome, silent Mrs. Darrell across the way, with her widow’s veil thrown back from her graceful head.

In those weeks, when Anne Clavering saw as little of the world as she could, she occasionally took quiet and solitary walks in which Baskerville would gladly have joined her. But Anne, with the over-delicacy of one who might be open to the suspicion of not being delicate enough, would not agree to see him except under the chaperonage of Mrs. Luttrell. And twice in those solitary walks she met Elizabeth Darrell, also alone. Both women regarded each other curiously, meanwhile averting their eyes.

Anne knew quite well who Elizabeth was, and at their second meeting, which was quite close to Elizabeth’s door, Anne was moved by the true spirit of courtesy and neighborly kindness to speak to her. She said, with a pleasant bow and smile: “This, I believe, is Mrs. Darrell, our neighbor, and I am Miss Clavering. I have the pleasure of knowing your father, General Brandon.”

Elizabeth received this advance with such apparent haughtiness that Anne, her face flushing, made some casual remark and went into her own house. In truth Elizabeth was frightened and surprised beyond measure, and felt herself so guilty that she knew not where to look or what to say, and literally fled from the sight of James Clavering’s innocent daughter as if she had been an accusing conscience.

Meanwhile the preparations for the grand St. Valentine’s musical and ball went gayly on. Clavering himself showed unwonted interest in it. He was as insensible of public approval or disapproval as any man well could be; nevertheless, he hoped that the report of the investigating committee would not be made public until after the great function on Shrove Tuesday. It pleased his fancy for the spectacular to think that the last entertainment he gave in Washington—for he well knew it would be the last—should be full of gorgeous splendor, so superbly unique that it would be remembered for a decade.

He told this to Elizabeth Darrell, for although the investigation was closed Clavering trumped up some specious requests for more of General Brandon’s information and assistance on certain alleged general points, and by this means still contrived to see Elizabeth once or twice a week. He tried to persuade Elizabeth to come to the grand festivity, and was deeply in earnest in his effort. He counted on its effect upon her when he should tell her that she could have similar entertainments whenever she liked, in a much larger and more splendid city than Washington—London or Paris, for example.

Elizabeth, however, recoiled with something like horror from the idea of going to Clavering’s house and being hospitably received by his wife and daughters; for she had reached the point when Clavering’s bribes—for so his love-making might be considered—were always in her mind. At one time she would feel so oppressed with her loneliness, her poverty, her disappointments, that she would be almost eager for the splendid destiny which Clavering offered her; at another time she would shrink from it with horror of it and horror of herself. All her social and religious prejudices were against divorce and were strong enough to have kept her from marrying Clavering if he had ever really been married to Mrs. Clavering, but as he had never been married to her no moral obligation existed. Elizabeth would also have been incapable of the meanness, the iniquity, of taking Clavering away from another woman who had a much better right to him than she; only she knew that Mrs. Clavering would suffer nothing in parting with Clavering. The feeling that his children might be wounded made no strong appeal to Elizabeth.

However, Clavering’s best argument—his stupendous wealth—was always in some form before her eyes. Every time she went out of doors, or even looked out of her window, she saw the evidences of Clavering’s fortune—his magnificent house, his army of servants, his superb equipages, his automobiles of every description. She could not get away from it, and it made her own shabby home seem the shabbier and the narrower every day she lived in it. Moreover, she was at that dangerous age when a woman is brought face to face with her destiny; when she is forced to say good-by to her girlhood and to reckon upon life without first youth or first love.

And after Hugh Pelham’s behavior, why should she reckon on love at all? Was there such a thing as love? He had apparently loved her with the noblest love; it had lasted many years, and finally, in a day, in an hour, for the merest paltry consideration of money, he had not only forgotten her, he had persecuted her. If it were not her fate to know the very ultimate sweetness of love, at least she might have known its consolation. Now that Pelham was lost to her she began to think reproachfully, as women will, of what he might have done for her. If he had been true to her, or even decent to her, she would never have been in those desperate straits in London; she would never have been in her present cruel position, for the instant her father knew of her embarrassments she knew he would sell the roof over his head to pay back the debt; and she would never have dreamed of marrying Clavering. All these troubles came from her having believed in love—and perhaps there was no such thing, after all. But in thinking of marrying Clavering and exchanging her present miserable existence for that promised dazzling London life, a shadow would fall across it—Hugh Pelham’s shadow. How would she face him? How could she conceal from him that she had sold herself to this man? And how could she visit him with the scorn lie deserved if she had so easily bartered herself away?

Clavering saw the conflict in Elizabeth’s mind, and it gave him a species of sardonic amusement at his own expense. Here he was, ready to sacrifice so much for this woman who had nothing, who could scarcely be brought to look upon what he offered her, and who had kept him at such a distance that he had but once touched her hand in private. He felt himself in many ways at a disadvantage with Elizabeth Darrell. He was, like all men, brought up in humble surroundings, unused to clever and highly organized women, and he did not exactly know how to appeal to such women or how to classify them. One moment Elizabeth would appear to him cleverer than the cleverest man, the next he saw in her some feminine foible that made her seem like a precocious child.

Yet all the time Clavering maintained, in his quietly overbearing way, that the whole affair of the marriage was fixed; but he was not so certain as he professed. He would talk of their plans: they would be married and go to London, and Elizabeth might have any sort of an establishment she liked. She was already well known and well connected there, and he candidly admitted to himself that it would probably be a season or two before London society would find out exactly what sort of a person he was. He warned Elizabeth not to expect any attention from the American ambassador, and was, in short, perfectly frank with her.

He saw that the idea of a life of splendor in London had its attraction for Elizabeth. If she should marry, she would not dare to remain in Washington, and she had no ties elsewhere in her own country. Clavering’s manners, in spite of his origin and career, were admirable, and she would have no occasion to blush for him in society—a point on which well-bred women are sensitive. She knew, in externals, he would compare favorably with any of the self-made Americans who buy their way into English society. For herself, her birth and breeding lifted her far above the average titled American woman, whose papa or mamma has bought her a title as they bought her a French doll in her childhood. And London was so large, and so little was really understood there of American life and manners, that Elizabeth felt they would be comparatively safe in London—if—if—

She had taken to reading the newspapers attentively, and had followed the investigation closely. She made herself some sort of a vague promise that should Clavering be exonerated she would marry him, but if he should be proved a scoundrel she would not. But she was already inwardly convinced that he was guilty. He told her, the first time he had a chance, of Baskerville’s interview with him—told it with such humor, such raciness, such enjoyment of Baskerville’s uncomfortable predicament, that Elizabeth, though little given to merriment, was obliged to laugh.

“Of course,” he said, “they will be married shortly. Baskerville has a fine position here—not showy, you know, but the right sort. He has a comfortable fortune, too. Gad! at his age I would have thought myself as rich as Rockefeller if I had had as much. Now it wouldn’t keep me in automobiles. I shall provide for Anne handsomely, and besides she will get everything I give her mother, which will be in itself a handsome fortune. Oh, I’m not mean about giving money to my family. Just as soon as Élise and Lydia get the cash I intend to give them, when I get the divorce, they will both be sure to marry some foreign sprig. They have a whole forest of them here and at those foreign watering-places. I shall give Reginald quite as much as he will know how to use, and that will still leave me enough to make you one of the richest women in the world.”

Then he redoubled his urging that Elizabeth should come to the grand musical; but she refused his proposition with such violence that he thought it prudent to say no more about it. General Brandon, however, had accepted with pleasure, and quite looked forward to the event. But the very day before, he came home from his office with a bad attack of rheumatism, and was forced to take to his bed.

In the afternoon of the next day, while Elizabeth was sitting by her father’s bedside reading to him, and occasionally giving furtive glances at the great masses of palms and magnificent flowering plants being carried into Clavering’s house, a card was brought up to her. It was inscribed, “Mr. Angus McBean.” So the solicitor had carried out his threat at last. Elizabeth’s heart gave a great jump, and then seemed as if dead within her. But she maintained some outward composure, and said she would see the gentleman in a few moments; and telling General Brandon that it was an acquaintance of other days, she left the room. She went to her own room to recover herself a little before descending to meet the man through whom Hugh Pelham had persecuted her ever since her husband’s death.

When she entered the drawing-room, the Scotchman rose and greeted her politely. Elizabeth answered his greeting coldly, and McBean, who had seen several Scotch duchesses at a distance, thought he had never beheld anything quite so haughty as this American woman. She remained standing, and Mr. McBean, perceiving she was not likely to ask him to sit, coolly took a chair; and Elizabeth, perforce, sat too.

“I have come in the interests of my client, Major Pelham, to endeavor to reach a basis of settlement with you, madam, concerning the matter we have been corresponding about,” blandly remarked Mr. McBean.

“So I supposed,” said Elizabeth, icily.

Mr. McBean continued, still blandly: “I may recall to you that you have persistently refused to answer my letters or to refer me to a lawyer, and as the affair involves jewels of considerable value, as well as large sums of money, I thought myself justified in coming to America to seek a settlement of the matter. May I inquire if you will now give me the name of your lawyer? For it would be far more to your interests—I may say it is necessary to your interests—that this matter be settled promptly.”

These words were of vague but dreadful import to Elizabeth. She remained silent. She knew nothing of law or lawyers, and the mere thought of consulting a lawyer seemed to her to be giving away her case. There was one,—yes, Richard Baskerville,—the only lawyer she knew in Washington, if she might still be said to know him. She recalled the few times she had seen him since her return to Washington. But she had known him well in the old days. He seemed to have retained his former kindness to her; she might consult him. All this passed rapidly through her mind. What she said was in a calm voice: “I think I need not consult any lawyer on the point of retaining my husband’s gift. The pendant to the necklace was my husband’s wedding present to me.”

Mr. McBean sighed patiently. He had had many dealings with lady clients, and all of them were like this, quite haughty and impossible, until they were frightened; then they would do anything that was asked of them. The only thing left, then, was to frighten Mrs. Darrell, and to give her to understand that the rights of property were the most sacred rights on earth—from the Scotch point of view.

“I think, madam, if you will kindly consent to see your solicitor, or—I believe you use the generic term in the States—your lawyer, and will afterward, have him kindly accord me an interview, you will change your mind upon this matter. The necklace, without counting the additions made to it by your husband, or the pendant, which I understand is of no great value, all of which will be restored to you, is worth at least fifteen hundred pounds. Such a piece of property is not to be disposed of lightly.”

So, then, being driven into a corner, helpless and alone, Elizabeth flatteringly consented to consult a lawyer. Mr. McBean left as his address a second-class hotel, and bowed himself out, promising to repeat his call as soon as he was permitted.

Had the Scotch solicitor known it, he had done more toward driving Elizabeth into marrying Clavering than any of Clavering’s offers, vows, urgings, and inducements. As she stood, pale and frightened, with a wildly beating heart, her eyes fell involuntarily on the superb house opposite her.

At that moment Clavering dashed up in a magnificent automobile, and got out. Elizabeth noticed that he did not walk with his usual graceful and springy step, and that he leaned against one of the stone pillars of the doorway, before the ever ready, gorgeously caparisoned flunky opened the entrance door. In truth, James Clavering had in his breast pocket a type-written document, which acted like a drag upon his footsteps and a weight upon his shoulders. It was a stolen copy of the report of the committee of investigation, for he always had those in his pay who served him on like occasions.

The next moment, Élise and Lydia drove up in a gem of a victoria. They were enveloped in the costliest furs, and so were the immaculate coachman and footman. The pair of perfectly matched bay cobs was worth a fortune. The harness was gold-mounted, with the Clavering initials upon it. As the two girls got out of the victoria Elizabeth caught the gleam of a long chain dotted with diamonds around Élise’s neck. Both of them seemed to radiate wealth; and there stood she, forlorn and despairing for the lack of a few hundred pounds!

Nor was this all. Even if the value of the necklace could be raised by her father’s sacrificing everything he had,—his interest in his mortgaged house,—what might not be done to her because she could not produce the necklace itself? Clavering had told her that with money enough it could easily be traced and recovered; but that would mean more money still, and she might as well ask for a star as for any more than the small sum her father could raise. And when she thought that by saying one word she could step from this unstable, bitter, and humiliating position into the very acme of luxury and all the ease of mind which money could give, it seemed to her almost a paradise. It was well for her that Clavering was not on the spot at that moment.

She went back to her father’s bedside and to reading the book she had laid down. She uttered the words, but her mind was far off. As she dwelt upon Mr. McBean’s phrases and thinly disguised threats, she grew more and more panic-stricken. At last Serena brought up General Brandon’s dinner, and Elizabeth went down to her own solitary meal in the dingy dining room. Action was forced upon her; she must see a lawyer, and Richard Baskerville was her only choice. She must try to see him that very night. As she knew he would not be at the Claverings’, she thought her chance of finding him at home was excellent.

When dinner was over Elizabeth gave Serena a note to take to Richard Baskerville, asking him to call that evening to see her upon a matter of pressing importance. She put her request upon the ground of old acquaintance, coupled with present necessity. Serena returned within a half-hour, with a note from Baskerville saying he would be pleased to call to see Mrs. Darrell that evening at half-past nine o’clock.

General Brandon having been made comfortable for the night, Elizabeth descended to the drawing-room. The gas was lighted, but turned low. Elizabeth went to the window, whence she could see the Clavering house blazing with light and an army of liveried servants moving to and fro. A fraction of the cost of that one entertainment would have made her a free woman.

Shortly after half-past nine o’clock Baskerville arrived. Like Elizabeth, he gazed with interest at the Clavering house. It was undoubtedly the last great entertainment there at which Anne would preside, and Baskerville had a conviction that it was the last entertainment the Claverings would ever give in Washington. He had private information that the committee of investigation had agreed upon its report, and he believed it would deal severely with Clavering.

He had been surprised to receive Elizabeth’s note, but he recognized at once that she was in great trouble, and he had come willingly, as a gentleman should. When he saw Elizabeth, he realized how great was her trouble. Then, sitting in the dimly lighted drawing-room, Elizabeth, with many pauses and palpitations and hesitations, began her story. Baskerville gently assisted her, and the telling of the first part was not so hard. When it came to the further history of it Elizabeth faltered, and asked anxiously, “But wasn’t the necklace mine entirely, after my husband gave it to me?”

Baskerville shook his head. “I’m afraid not, Mrs. Darrell, and I am afraid that Major Darrell made a mistake—a perfectly natural and excusable mistake—in thinking it was his to give you in perpetuity. Of course I am not so well informed on these points as an English lawyer would be, but from what you tell me of the other jewels, and the course of the solicitor concerning them, I cannot but think that he knows what he is doing, and that you will have to give up the necklace, retaining of course your pendant, and perhaps the stones your husband bought.”

Elizabeth looked at him with wild, scared eyes; and then, bursting into tears, told him the whole story of pawning the necklace, of finding it gone, and her unwillingness to own what she had done. Baskerville was startled, but allowed her to weep on, without trying to check her. He saw that she was in a state of trembling excitement, excessive even under the circumstances, and she must have her tears out. She had, so far, avoided mentioning Pelham’s name.

“But what of the heirs of Major Darrell? Surely, when they know how you were straitened in London after your husband’s death and the good faith in which you pledged the necklace, they would not wish to distress you unnecessarily about it.”

Then Elizabeth was forced to speak of Pelham. “Major Darrell’s heir is his cousin, Major Pelham, the man—next my husband and my father—whom I thought my truest friend. He is in West Africa now, or was when my husband died, and I have not heard of his return to England since. But he has countenanced all this, and seems to delight in persecuting me through this man McBean. And it is quite useless, too, as I have no means of paying the money. I have only a small income, about a hundred pounds a year. But if my father learns of my trouble, as he eventually must if this persecution is kept up, he will certainly sell this house—his only piece of property, and mortgaged at that. Oh, I didn’t think a man could be so cruel as Hugh Pelham has been!”

“Does McBean claim to be acting under Major Pelham’s instructions?”

“Yes. In everything he writes me or says to me he uses Hugh Pelham’s name.”

“There is hut one thing to do, Mrs. Darrell. I shall see McBean to-morrow and endeavor to see what I can do with him. If I fail with him, I shall appeal to Major Pelham.”

“Oh, no, not that—not that!”

She spoke with so much of feeling, of anger, of mortification in her voice, that Baskerville could not but suspect that there was something more concerning Pelham which Elizabeth had not chosen to tell him; but his duty to her as a friend and a lawyer remained the same. “Pardon me,” he said kindly, “but I think it almost necessary to inform Major Pelham of the state of the case. I shall not, however, do it unless you consent. But I think you will consent.”

Elizabeth grew more composed, and they talked some time longer—talked until the rolling of carriages began under the porte-cochÈre of the Clavering house, and women wrapped in gorgeous ball cloaks and trailing behind them rich brocades and velvets and sparkling chiffons began to pour through the great entrance doors into the regions of light and splendor beyond. The rhythmic swell of music began to be heard; the great festivity had begun.

Both Elizabeth and Baskerville, sitting in the quiet room only a stone’s throw away, were thinking about what was going on in the great mansion across the street. Elizabeth was asking herself if, after all, there were any alternative left her but to agree to marry Clavering. One word, and all her troubles and perplexities about money, which had spoiled her life from the time of her girlhood, would disappear. And if she did not marry Clavering—here her dread and apprehension became so strong that she was sickened at the contemplation.

In spite of her preoccupation with her own troubles she could not but regard Baskerville with interest, knowing of his relations with Anne Clavering. Here was another man, like Pelham, who seemed the very mirror of manly love and courage; but perhaps he would be no better than Pelham in the long run. He might marry Anne under an impulse of generous feeling and live to repent it. Elizabeth was becoming a sceptic on the subject of man’s love.

Baskerville had no suspicion that Elizabeth Darrell knew anything of his relations with Anne Clavering, nor did he connect Clavering in any way with Elizabeth. He was thinking of Anne while talking to Elizabeth, remembering how she had disliked and dreaded this great function. She was to do the honors of the occasion, Mrs. Clavering being still ailing. The town had been ringing with the magnificence of the coming festivity, but Anne had been so averse to it that Baskerville had said little about it to her. It was out of the question that he should go, and so no card had been sent him; and he agreed fully with Anne that the affair was most unfortunately conspicuous at the present time.

A silence had fallen between Baskerville and Elizabeth, while listening to the commotion outside. A sudden wild impulse came to Elizabeth to tell Baskerville, of all men, her struggles about consenting to marry Clavering, without mentioning any name. Baskerville had been kind and helpful to her; he had come to her immediately at her request; and before she knew it she was saying to him, in a nervous voice: “I could be free from all these anxieties about money, my father could end his days in ease—all, all if I would but marry a divorced man—a man to be divorced, that is. And after all, he never was actually married, it was a mistake.”

Baskerville had been looking abstractedly out of the window at the carriages flashing past, but at this he turned quickly to Elizabeth. “You mean Senator Clavering?” Baskerville was a remarkably self-contained man, but in his burst of surprise the name fell from his lips before he knew it.

Elizabeth sat dumb. She had yielded to a mad impulse, and would have given a year of her life to have unsaid those words. Baskerville hesitated for a minute or two, and then rose. Elizabeth’s silence, the painful flushing of her face, her whole attitude of conscious guilt, proclaimed the truth of Baskerville’s surmise. He looked at her in pity and commiseration. She had just told him enough to make him understand how great the temptation was to her; and yet so far she had not yielded. But that she would yield he had not the least doubt. And what untold miseries would not she, or any woman like her, bring upon herself by marrying Clavering!

It was a question which neither one of them could discuss, and Baskerville’s only words were: “I have no right to offer you my advice, except on the point upon which you have consulted me, but I beg of you to consider well what you are thinking of. You are hovering over dreadful possibilities for yourself. Good night.”

He was going, but Elizabeth ran and grasped his arm. “You won’t speak of this to Miss Clavering! You must not do it! You have no right!”

Baskerville smiled rather bitterly. Whether Elizabeth were afraid or ashamed he did not know—probably both.

“Certainly I shall not,” he said, and to Elizabeth’s ears his tone expressed the most entire contempt.

“And I haven’t promised him—I haven’t agreed yet,” she added, tears coming into her eyes; and then Baskerville was gone.

Elizabeth sat, stunned by her own folly, and burning with shame at the scorn she fancied Baskerville had felt for her. He had been kind to her and had agreed to do all that was possible with McBean, but by her own act she had lost his good will and respect. Well, it was part of the web of destiny. She was being driven to marry Clavering by every circumstance of her life—even this last. Pelham’s unkindness was the beginning of it; McBean’s persecution helped it on; General Brandon’s goodness and generosity, Baskerville’s contempt for her—all urged her on; she supposed Baskerville would probably have nothing more to do with her affairs and would leave her to face McBean alone, and that would be the end of her resistance to Clavering.

She went up to her own room and, with a cloak huddled about her, sat by the window in the dark, looking out upon the splendid scene of a great ball in a capital city. Elizabeth in the cold and darkness watched it all—watched until the ambassadors’ carriages were called, followed rapidly by the other equipages which were parked in the surrounding streets for blocks. At last, after three o’clock in the morning, the trampling of horses’ hoofs, the closing of carriage doors, and the commotion of footmen and coachmen ceased—the great affair was over. Quickly as in the transformation scene at a theatre, the splendid house grew dark—all except the windows of Clavering’s library. They remained brilliantly lighted long after all else in the street was dark and quiet.

Elizabeth, for some reason inexplicable to herself, remained still at her window, looking at the blaze of light from Clavering’s library windows. What was keeping him up so late? Was it good news or bad? Had the report of the committee been made?

Within the library sat Clavering in his accustomed chair. In his hand he held a type-written document of many pages, which had cost him many thousands of dollars to have purloined and copied from another one which was locked up in the safe of the secretary of the Senate. Every page of this document proclaimed in some form or other his guilt, and at the bottom was written in the handwriting of a man he knew well, and who had stolen and copied the report for him:—

“Resolution of expulsion will be introduced immediately after reading of report, and will pass by three-fourths majority.”

And the hired thief had not played fair with him. He had discovered that at least three newspapers had bought the stolen report, and at that very moment he knew the great presses in the newspaper offices were clanging with the story of his disgrace to be printed on the morrow.

Then there was a bunch of telegrams from his state capital. If the Senate did not vote to expel, the legislature would request him to resign; so there was no vindication there. To this, then, had his public career come! Clavering was not honest himself, nor did he believe in honesty in others; but he believed it possible that he might have been more secret in his evil-doing. He had thought that with money, brains, and courage he could brazen anything out. But behold! he could not. He was fairly caught and exposed. Those stray words of Baskerville’s, uttered some months before, recurred to him, “There is no real substitute for honesty.”

He had heard the news on his way home that afternoon, from an out-of-town expedition. It had unnerved him for a little while; it was that which made him get out of the automobile so heavily when Elizabeth, unseen, was watching him. He had gone through the evening, however, bravely and even cynically. Many senators had been asked to the great function, but scarcely half a dozen had appeared; and all of them were inconsiderable men, dragged there by their womenkind. In the course of some hours of reflection—for Clavering could think in a crowd—a part of his indomitable courage and resource had returned. He had no fear of the criminal prosecution which would certainly follow. William M. Tweed had been caught, but Tweed was a mere vulgar villain and did not know when he was beaten. Clavering rapidly made up his mind that he could afford to restore eight or even ten millions of dollars to the rightful owners, and that would satisfy them; they wouldn’t be likely to spend any part of it in trying to punish him.

As for any part the state and federal government might take he was not particularly concerned. The party had done enough to clear its skirts by expelling him from the Senate, and if he satisfied all the claims against him, nobody would have any object in entering upon a long, expensive, and doubtful trial. But after paying out even ten millions of dollars he would have twice as much left, which nobody and no government could get, though it was as dishonestly made as the rest. With that much money and Elizabeth Darrell—for Elizabeth entered into all his calculations—life would still be worth living.

When the mob of gayly dressed people were gone, when the laughter and the dancing and the music and the champagne and the feasting were over, and Clavering sat in his library alone under the brilliant chandelier, he grew positively cheerful. He was not really fond of public life, and although he would have liked to get out of it more gracefully, he was not really sorry to go. He had found himself bound in a thousand conventions since he had been in Washington. He had been hampered by his family: by his wife because she was old and stupid and ignorant, by Élise and Lydia because they were so bad, by Anne and Reginald because they were so honest. It would be rather good to be free once more—free in the great, wide, untamed West, free in the vast, populous, surging cities of Europe. He would have Elizabeth with him; he did not much care for any one else’s society. She had never heard him admit his guilt, and he could easily persuade her that he was the victim of untoward circumstances.

While he was thinking these things, he heard a commotion overhead. Presently the whole house was roused, and servants were running back and forth. Elizabeth Darrell, still watching at her window, saw the sudden and alarming awakening of the silent house. Mrs. Clavering had been taken violently ill. Before sunrise the poor lady was no longer in any one’s way. A few hours of stupor, a little awakening at the last, a clinging to Anne and Reginald and telling them to be good, and Mrs. Clavering’s gentle spirit was free and in peace.

When the undertaker was hanging the streamers of black upon the door-bell, the morning newspaper was laid on the steps. On the first page, with great head-lines, was the announcement that Senator Clavering had been found guilty of the charges against him and that expulsion from the Senate was certain to follow. The newspaper omitted to state how the information was obtained.