be the greatest comfort to have you in the house."

"I will stay, certainly," said Emory. He had taken his Sunday dinner
at the old house in I Street for almost a quarter of a century. To-day
he had been unusually silent, and had contracted his brows nervously
every time Betty looked at him. She understood perfectly, and amused
herself by turning round upon him several times with abrupt
significance. However, she spared him until they had taken Mrs.
Madison to the parlor and gone to the library, where he might smoke
his after-dinner cigar. He sat down in front of a window, and the
sunlight poured over him, glistening his handsome head and
illuminating his skin. Betty supposed that some women might fall quite
desperately in love with him; and in addition to his beauty he was a
noble and high-minded gentleman, whose narrowness was due to the
secluded life he chose to lead.

"Now!" she exclaimed, "come out with it! You've had eleven days, and
one can learn a good deal in that time."

He bit sharply at the end of his cigar, but answered without
hesitation.

"It is almost impossible to learn anything in Washington to the
detriment of the Senate. There seems to be a sort of _esprit de corps_
in the entire city. They look politely horrified if you suggest that a
Senator of the United States, honouring Washington with the society of
his wives and daughters, is anything that he should not be. I was
obliged to go to New York and Boston to get the information I wanted,
and even now it is far from complete. I don't believe it is possible
to arrive at anything like accurate knowledge on the subject."