ered yawn, she rose from her chair, and went over to the
canary cage, raising the silk cover, while she put her lips to the wires
and piped softly.

"Dicky is fast asleep," she remarked, turning away, "and you, Ben, are
nodding. How dull the evenings are when one has nothing to do."

The next day I went to New York, and leaving Washington on Thursday
afternoon, I had expected to reach Richmond in time to appear at Sally's
reception by nine o'clock that evening. But a wreck on the road caused
the train to be held back for several hours, and it was already late
when I jumped from the cab at my door, and hurried under the awning
across the pavement. The sound of stringed instruments playing softly
reached me as it had done so many years ago on the night when I first
crossed the threshold; and a minute afterwards, when I went hastily up
the staircase, in its covering of white, and its festoons of smilax,
pretty girls made way for me, with laughing reprimands on their lips.
Dressing as quickly as I could, I came down again and met the same
rebukes from the same charming and smiling faces.

"You are really the most outrageous man I know," observed Bonny
Marshall, stopping me at the foot of the staircase. "Poor Sally has been
so awfully worried that she hasn't any colour, and I've advised her
simply to engage George as permanent proxy. He is taking your place this
evening quite charmingly."

The splendour of her appearance, rather than the severity of her words,
held me bound and speechless. She was the most beautiful woman, it was
generally admitted, in all Virginia, and in her spangled gown, which
fell away from her superb shoulders, there was something brilliant and
barbaric about her that went like strong wine to the head. A minute
later she passed on, surrounded by former discarded lovers; and before
entering the drawing-room--where Sally was standing between George
Bolingbroke and a man whom I did not know--I paused behind a tub of
flowering azalea, and watched the brightly coloured gowns of the women
as they flitted back and forth over the shining floor. It was a year
since I had been out even to dine, and while I stood there, the music,
the lights, and the gaily dressed, laughing women produced in me the old
boyish consciousness of the disadvantage of my size, of my awkwardness,
of my increasing weight. I remembered suddenly the figure of President
as he had loomed on the night of our first dinner party between the