to Ilseboro she had been at one or
two dinners at the British embassy. But that had been long ago, before
the days of her discovery of the Federal Constitution. Of governmental
Washington she knew nothing.

The Senate committee met at ten the next morning. There was a good deal
of interest in the hearing, and the corridors were full of people
waiting for the doors to open. Miss Bennett and Lydia were taken in
first through a private room to assure their having good seats. Lydia
found the committee room beautiful--more like a gentleman's library than
an office--wide, high windows looking out on the Capitol grounds, tall
bookcases with glass doors and blue-silk curtains, a huge polished-wood
table in the center; with chairs about it for the senators.

She recognized them as they came in from Albee's description--the neat
blue-eyed senator who looked like a little white fox, his enemy; the fat
blond young man, full of words and smiles, who was a most ineffective
friend; and the large suave chairman, in a tightly fitting plum-colored
suit, with a grace of manner that kept you from knowing whether he were
friend or foe.

Not that you would have suspected from anyone's manner that there was
such a thing as enmity in the world--they were all so quiet and
friendly. Indeed, when Albee came in he was talking--"chatting" would be
a better word--with the little fox-faced senator against whom he had so
specially warned Lydia. The whole tone was as if eight or ten
hard-working men had called in a friend to help them out on the facts.

Lydia thought it very exciting, knowing as she did how much of hate and
party politics lay behind the hearing. She was only dimly aware that her
own future depended on the impression Albee might now make upon her. In
his own investigation in New York he was the chief, but here he would be
attacked, ruled against, tripped up if possible. There he was a general,
here he was a duelist. She saw several senators glancing at her, asking
who she was, and guessed that the answer was that she was the girl Albee
was in love with, engaged to, making a fool of himself over--something
like that. She didn't mind. She felt proud to be identified with him.
She looked at him as he sat down at the chairman's right, and tried to
think how she would feel if she were saying to herself, "There's my
husband." Could you marry a man for whom you felt an immovable physical
coldness? She thought of Dan O'Bannon's kiss, and the