who were discussing a
political secret, and her eyes melted tenderly as Vincent's name passed
Jack's lips. She touched his bowed head gently, saying:

"Why, how serious you are! One would think beauty a battery, and you on
the way to charge."

"You are right. It is a murderous ambush."

"Well, if you regard it so seriously--God bless you in it."

Her gentle eyes rested tenderly on him; he seized the kind hand, and,
raising it to his lips in the gallant Southern fashion, turned and
hurried away among the guests.

"Ah, Mrs. Atterbury, conquests at your age, from hand to lip, there's
but short interval," and the President held up a warning finger as he
came closer to the lady.

"Oh, no, age makes a long route between hand and lip--thirty years ago
you kissed my hand, and you never reached the lip."

"It wasn't my fault that I didn't."

"Nor your misfortune either," and Mrs. Atterbury glanced archly at her
rival, Mrs. Davis, the mature beauty of the scene.

Dick, meanwhile, not so dexterous in expedients or ready in speech as
his mentor, became wedged in an eddy, just outside the main stream,
pouring drawing-room ward, so that, returning to the spot where they had
separated, Jack did not, for the moment, discover him.

Rosa's gayety and delight deepened the depression that made Dick so
unlike himself. At first, in the exuberance of the scene, the girl did
not heed this. She knew everybody, and, though in daily contact with
most of them, there were no end of whispered confidences to exchange and
tender reassurances in ratification of some new compact. Then there were
solemn notes of comparison as to the fit and form of gowns, or the fit
of a furbelow, exhaustively discussed, perhaps that very afternoon. Keen
eyes, merry and tantalizing, were lifted to Dick's sulky face during
this pretty by-play, but all the gayety of the comedy was lost to him.
When he could contain himself no longer, with another bevy of cronies in
sight coming down the stairs, he cried out, desperately:

"For Heaven's sake, Rosa, don't wait here like the statue in St.
Peter's, to be kissed by everybody on the way to the pope; it's simply
sickening to stand here like a shrine to be slopped by girls that you
see every day. Come away; I want to say something to you."

Rosa turned her astonished eyes upon the railer, and, with a comic
movement of immense dignity, drew her arm from his sheltering elbow,
and, in tones of freezing _hauteur_ retort