WAS LOBBIED FOR

The Hon. Pratt C. Gashwiler, M.C., was of course unaware of the
incident described in the last chapter. His secret, even if it had been
discovered by Dobbs, was safe in that gentleman's innocent and honorable
hands, and certainly was not of a quality that Mr. Wiles, at present,
would have cared to expose. For, in spite of Mr. Wiles's discomfiture,
he still had enough experience of character to know that the irate
member from Fresno would be satisfied with his own peculiar manner of
vindicating his own personal integrity, and would not make a public
scandal of it. Again, Wiles was convinced that Dobbs was equally
implicated with Gashwiler, and would be silent for his own sake. So that
poor Dobbs, as is too often the fate of simple but weak natures, had
full credit for duplicity by every rascal in the land.

From which it may be inferred that nothing occurred to disturb the
security of Gashwiler. When the door closed upon Mr. Wiles, he indited
a note which, with a costly but exceedingly distasteful
bouquet,--rearranged by his own fat fingers, and discord and incongruity
visible in every combination of color,--he sent off by a special
messenger. Then he proceeded to make his toilet,--an operation rarely
graceful or picturesque in our sex, and an insult to the spectator when
obesity is superadded. When he had put on a clean shirt, of which there
was grossly too much, and added a white waistcoat, that seemed to accent
his rotundity, he completed his attire with a black frock coat of the
latest style, and surveyed himself complacently before a mirror. It is
to be recorded that, however satisfactory the result might have been to
Mr. Gashwiler, it was not so to the disinterested spectator. There are
some men on whom "that deformed thief, Fashion," avenges himself by
making their clothes appear perennially new. The gloss of the tailor's
iron never disappears; the creases of the shelf perpetually rise in
judgment against the wearer. Novelty was the general suggestion of Mr.
Gashwiler's full-dress,--it was never his HABITUDE;--and "Our own
Make," "Nobby," and the "Latest Style, only $15," was as patent on the
legislator's broad back as if it still retained the shop-man's ticket.

Thus arrayed, within an hour he complacently followed the note and his
floral offering. The house he sought had been once the residence of
a foreign Ambassador, who had loyally represented his government in a
single unimportant treaty