ithout looking into my eyes, as though I
made part of her study. What sat on her face was perplexity, wonder,
amazement, and something else, I know not what. Something of her perfect
poise and confidence, her quality as woman of the world, seemed to drop
away. A strange and childlike quality came into her face, a pathos
unlike anything I had seen there before. She took my hand mechanically.

"Of course," said she, as though she spoke to herself, "it can not be.
But, dear God! would it not be enough?"

I did not understand her speech. I stood and watched her carriage as it
whirled away. Thinking of my great need for haste, mechanically I
looked at my watch. It was one o'clock. Then I reflected that it was at
eleven of the night previous that I had first met the Baroness von Ritz.
Our acquaintance had therefore lasted some fourteen hours.

CHAPTER X

MIXED DUTIES

Most women will forgive a liberty, rather than a slight.
--_Colton_.

When I crossed the White House grounds and found my way to the spot
where I had left my horse, I discovered my darky boy lying on his back,
fast asleep under a tree, the bridle reins hooked over his upturned
foot. I wakened him, took the reins and was about to mount, when at the
moment I heard my name called.

Turning, I saw emerge from the door of Gautier's little cafe, across the
street, the tall figure of an erstwhile friend of mine, Jack Dandridge,
of Tennessee, credited with being the youngest member in the House of
Representatives at Washington--and credited with little else.

Dandridge had been taken up by friends of Jackson and Polk and carried
into Congress without much plan or objection on either side. Since his
arrival at the capital he had been present at few roll-calls, and had
voted on fewer measures. His life was given up in the main to one
specialty, to-wit: the compounding of a certain beverage, invented by
himself, the constituent parts of which were Bourbon whiskey, absinthe,
square faced gin and a dash of _eau de vie_. This concoction, over which
few shared his own personal enthusiasm, he had christened the
Barn-Burner's Dream; although Mr. Dandridge himself was opposed to the
tenets of the political party thus entitled--which, by the way, was to
get its whimsical name, possibly from Dandridge himself, at the
forthcoming Democratic convention of that year.

Jack Dandridge, it may be said, was originally