emphasis that bordered on blasphemy. Next day he was so dull that the Honourable Mark Antony Hudgins charged him with having been jilted by a certain tailor-made and Paris-enamelled widow whom Thorndyke paid considerable attention to and cordially hated. That very afternoon, though, he had his recompense, for, strolling through the beautiful but unfashionable Smithsonian grounds, he met Constance Maitland driving; and in response to a timid request on his part, she took him in the victoria, and they had a delicious hour to themselves under the great, overhanging elms and lindens. Few situations are more agreeable than driving in a victoria with a charming woman on a sunny spring afternoon through a secluded park. Something like it may be experienced by sitting in a darkened theatre-box a little behind, and within touch of a dainty ear, inhaling the odour of the flowers she wears upon her breast, and watching, with her, the development of the old love-story on the stage. But all pleasures have their seasons--and in the spring, the victoria is more enticing than the theatre-box. And Constance was so very, very kind to him that afternoon! She showed a truly feminine curiosity about Annette Crane, whom Thorndyke praised unstintedly, and when he asked Constance to call on Mrs. Crane, Constance replied that she already intended to do so. She asked about Crane’s political prospects, which Thorndyke assured her were of the brightest, adding he had grave apprehensions that the majority in the lower House would not, after all, make fools of themselves as he ardently desired they should--which sentiment was promptly rebuked by Constance, who, womanlike, never could be made to really understand the game of politics. Then he asked her what she had been doing in that week. She had been out to a suburban club to a dinner given by Cathcart, at which information Thorndyke scowled. Sir Mark le Poer was coming back to town for a few days, expressly, so Constance believed, to see the Honourable Mark Antony Hudgins, of Texas. The meeting of the Guild for Superannuated Governesses had taken place at the house of the Secretary of State, Mrs. Hill-Smith in the chair, and had been extremely amusing. It had been determined to give an amateur concert in a fashionable hotel ball-room. This, as always, had caused many heart-burnings and bickerings. The concert was to be followed by a tea in the same ball-room. All of the prominent ladies of the diplomatic corps had been asked to act as patronesses, and all had agreed, but were not sure they could be present. Some ladies of great wealth, who were even newer than the Baldwins, came rather aggressively to the front. Mrs. Hill-Smith, with other scions of old families of her date--1860--thought that no one whose family was not moderately old--that is to say about 1870--should be among the directors and patronesses. They did not speak this aloud, but there was a general