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Senator North

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his pleasant hours, in time his confidante. She would devote her thought to the making of herself into the companion he most needed and desired; and she would conceal her love lest he conceive it his duty to avoid her. She wondered if she had betrayed herself, and concluded that she had not. Even he could not guess how much of her admiration emanated from frankness and how much from coquetry. She would be careful in the future. "That point settled," she thought, curling down deeper into her bed and preparing for a nap, "I'll anticipate his coming and think about him with all the youthful exuberance I please." XVIII Betty had invited Senator Burleigh to dinner on Saturday, that he might feel free to call elsewhere on Sunday. At four o'clock, when Mrs. Madison had retired for her nap, she commanded Jack Emory to take Harriet for a long walk and a long ride on the cable cars, and to stop for Sally Carter. No one else was likely to call, and she retired to her boudoir, a three-cornered room in an angle between the parlor and library, to await Senator North. The boudoir was a room that any man might look forward to after a hard day on Capitol Hill. Its easychairs were very soft and deep, its rugs were rosy and delicate, and the walls and windows and doors were hung with one of those old French silk stuffs with a design of royal conventionality and uniformly old rose in colour. All of Betty's own books were there, her piano, several handsome pieces of carved oak, and a unique collection of ivory. Betty had banished the former girlish simplicity of this room a few days after her introduction to the Montgomery house. She had imagined herself greeting Senator North in it many times, and had received no other man within its now sacred walls. She wore a white cloth gown today and a blue ribbon in her hair. There was also a touch of blue at the neck, to make her throat look the whiter. Otherwise, the long closely fitting gown was without ornament as far down as the hem, which was lightly embroidered in white. She looked tall and lithe, but her figure was round, and did not sway like a reed that a strong wind would beat to the ground, as Harriet's did. Although that possible descendant of African kings possessed the black splendour of eyes and hair and a marble regularity of feature, Betty was the more beautiful woman of the two; for her colour filled and warmed the eye, she seemed typical of womanhood in its highest development, and she was a chosen receptacle of enchantment. Moreover, she was more modern and original, and as healthy as had been the fashion for the past generation, Harriet looked like an old Roman coin come to life, with a blight on her soul and little blood in her thin body. It was not in Betty's nature to fear any woman, much less to experience petty jealousy, but it was not without satisfaction she reflected that she and Harriet would hardly attract the same sort of man. Jack was doing his duty nobly, and he liked vivacious women who amused him, poor soul! As for Senator Burleigh, he had said politely that she was handsome but looked delicate, and then unquestionably dismissed her from his mind. He and Betty had talked politics on the previous evening until Mrs. Madison had slipped off to bed an hour earlier than usual. Betty dismissed them all from her mind and glanced at the clock. It was half-past four. She thrust the poker between the glowing logs, and the flames leaped and sent a quivering glow through the charming room. Betty leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, almost holding her breath that she might hear the advancing step of the butler the sooner. In what seemed to her exactly thirty minutes she looked at the clock again. It was twenty-five minutes to five. She nestled down, assuring herself that nobody could be expected to come on the moment, but this time she did not close her eyes; she watched the clock. And the joy imperceptibly died out of her; the hands travelled inexorably round to ten minutes to five; she remembered that she had not seen Senator North since Wednesday, and that in four days a busy legislator might easily forget the existence of every woman he knew, except perhaps of the woman he loved. Within her seemed to rise a tide of bitter memories, the memories of all those women who had sat and waited through dreary hours for man's uncertain coming. She shivered and drew close to the fire and covered her face with her hands. Her heart ached for the helpless misery of her sex. But she sprang suddenly to her feet. The butler was coming down the hall. A moment later he had ushered in Senator North, and Betty forgot the misery of the world, forgot it so completely that there was no violent reaction; she was merely what she had been at half-past four, full of pleasurable excitement held down and watched over by the instinct of caution. "I must apologize humbly for being late," he said, "but on Sunday I always sit with my wife until she falls asleep, and to-day she was nearly an hour later than usual. What a room to come into out of a biting wind! Thank heaven I was able to get here." Betty thought of the sister and cousin she had turned out into the cruel afternoon, and then looked at Senator North deep in the chair where she had so often imagined him, and forgot their existence. This was her hour--her first, at least--and visions of pneumonia and possible consumption should not mar it. She sat opposite him in a straight dark high-backed chair, and she was quite aware that she made a delightful picture. "Well?" he asked. "What of your visit and its consequences?" Betty told the story; and her description of the dilapidated parsonage at the head of the miserable village, the group of silent women about the coffin in the dark room, and her interview with her melancholy relative was as dramatic as she had felt at the time. "I thought I was running from a nightmare when I left the house," she concluded, smiling at him as if to demonstrate that it had left no shadow in her brain; "but now we both feel better. She wants a gown of many colours, and this morning she roused the house at five o'clock singing camp-meeting hymns. But I think she is quick and observant, and will soon cease to be in any danger of betraying herself. But she is a great responsibility, and I really felt old this morning."

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