She stood a few seconds, smiling mischievously into the florid face of the large-featured woman of most certain age, whose light-yellow eyes flashed back unmistakable malice, then, amid the roar of applause that greeted the peroration of a white-haired senator in the chamber below, she quietly stole out of the Capitol, and sought a favorite corner of the Smithsonian grounds. Walking slowly, she asked in a spirit of self-chastisement why she had allowed waspish stings to provoke a retaliatory tone, at variance with that cool repose of well-bred urbanity and imperturbable courtesy on which she prided herself; and was not the condescension of retort an unladylike and mortifying weakness? Now and then come radiant days when a noon sun shines hot, and no faintest film flecks the stainless blue, yet one grows vaguely conscious of waning brightness, and gradually the horizon blanches to a deadly grey, while leaden clouds creep into view like spectral fingers of some vast hand groping across the sky to smother the sun. Shadows projected by the invisible unnerve natures that fearlessly face tangible, well-defined danger, as 'the sallow, weird light preceding an eclipse is more menacing than its total darkness, where friendly stars still shine.' For Eglah, the clock of fate had begun to chime that _mauvais quart d'heure_ which Mrs. Maurice had known would inevitably overtake her, and the preliminary whirring of the hidden cogs had found her unprepared. Blind faith in her father's sagacity, political steadfastness, and incorruptibility, had built a pedestal from which he smiled down benignantly upon her, making life a festival; but when the needle of doubt pricked the fine veil love spun across her vision, and she dared allow herself to question, a shivering and nameless dread shook her happy young heart, as unexpectedly blighting as a shower of sleet on an August passion-flower. When Jove nods his worship wanes. Since the night of the cotillon, several inexplicable circumstances, comparatively slight yet cumulative, had perplexed this fond and loyal daughter, who began to find the maze of Senator Kent's political methods too tortuous for her exploration.