s best garb and with its bravest face was now arriving
fast, and Prescott drifted with some of his friends into one of the
smaller parlours. When he returned to the larger room it was crowded,
and many voices mingled there. But all noise ceased suddenly and then in
the hush some one said: "There she comes!" Prescott knew who was meant
and his anger hardened in him.

Miss Catherwood was looking unusually well, and even those who had
dubbed her "The Beautiful Yankee" added another superlative adjective. A
spot of bright red burned in either cheek and she held her head very
high. "How haughty she is!" Prescott heard some one say. Her height,
her figure, her look lent colour to the comment.

Her glance met Prescott's and she bowed to him, as to any other man whom
she knew, and then with the Secretary beside her, obviously proud of the
lady with whom he had come, she received the compliments of her host.

Lucia Catherwood did not seem to be conscious that everybody was looking
at her, yet she knew it well and realized that the gaze was a singular
mixture of curiosity, like and dislike. It could not well be otherwise,
where there was so much beauty to inspire admiration or jealousy and
where there were sentiments known to be different from those of all the
others present. A mystery as tantalizing as it was seductive, together
with a faint touch of scandal which some had contrived to blow upon her
name, though not enough really to injure her as yet, sufficed to give a
spice to the conversation when she was its subject.

The President engaged her in talk for a few minutes. He himself, clad in
a grayish-brown suit of foreign manufacture, was looking thin and old,
the slight stoop in his shoulders showing perceptibly. But he brightened
up with Southern gallantry as he talked to Miss Catherwood. He seemed to
find an attraction not only in her beauty and dignity, but in her
opinions as well and the ease with which she expressed them. He held her
longer than any other guest, and Mr. Sefton was the third of three,
facile, smiling, explaining how they wished to make a convert of Miss
Catherwood and yet expected to do so. Here in Richmond, surrounded by
truth and with her eyes open to it, she must soon see the error of her
ways; he, James Sefton, would vouch for it.

"I have no doubt, Mr. Sefton, that you will contribute to that end,"
said the President.

She was the centre of a group presently, and the group included the
Secreta