were the hugest joke in the world. The flag on the Austro-Hungarian
embassy hung at half-mast and symbols of mourning fluttered from the
entire front of the house. Shirley lifted her eyes gravely as she passed.
Her thoughts flew at once to the scene at the house of the Secretary of
State a week before, when Baron von Marhof had learned of the death of
his sovereign; and by association she thought, too, of Armitage, and of
his, look and voice as he said:

"Long live the Emperor and King! God save Austria!"

Emperors and kings! They were as impossible today as a snowstorm. The
grave ambassadors as they appeared at great Washington functions, wearing
their decorations, always struck her as being particularly distinguished.
It just now occurred to her that they were all linked to the crown and
scepter; but she dismissed the whole matter and bowed to two dark ladies
in a passing victoria with the quick little nod and bright smile that
were the same for these titled members of the Spanish Ambassador's
household as for the young daughters of a western senator, who
democratically waved their hands to her from a doorstep.

Armitage came again to her mind. He had called at the Claiborne house
twice since the Secretary's ball, and she had been surprised to find how
fully she accepted him as an American, now that he was on her own soil.
He derived, too, a certain stability from the fact that the Sandersons
knew him; he was, indeed, an entirely different person since the Montana
Senator definitely connected him with an American landscape. She had kept
her own counsel touching the scene on the dark deck of the _King Edward_,
but it was not a thing lightly to be forgotten. She was half angry with
herself this mellow afternoon to find how persistently Armitage came into
her thoughts, and how the knife-thrust on the steamer deck kept recurring