In the general mix-up that followed in the hallowed spot, Constance found herself one of a group near Mrs. Hill-Smith, on the arm of the British Ambassador, and Eleanor Baldwin and the Honourable Edward George Francis Castlestuart-Stuart. Close by were Mrs. James Brentwood Baldwin and Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin, and Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin was gravitating toward the Secretary of State, who loomed large at hand. The Secretary was in a very bad humour for so amiable a man, but diplomatically concealed it. After eighteen months spent in labouring over a couple of treaties, they had been knocked out in three weeks by the Senate. The chief of the gang who perpetrated this nefarious act was a Southern Senator--the wildest, woolliest, and weirdest of all the wild and woolly and weird Senators to be found in the north wing of the Capitol. But he happened to be a lawyer, and he had punched the treaties so full of holes that they were literally laughed out of court. This injured the Secretary’s feelings very much, but he remembered that Beaconsfield and Gortschakoff and Bismarck used to be ruffled the same way, so he concluded to bear it like a statesman and a Christian. Drifting toward the Secretary and Mr. Baldwin was a very odd-looking object, whom Thorndyke whispered to Constance was Senator Mince Pie Mulligan. These three got into conversation, very languid on the part of the Secretary and Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin, but very strenuous on the part of Senator Mince Pie Mulligan. A part of Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin’s coyness came from the fact that he and Senator Mulligan were old acquaintances--a fact which Mr. Baldwin had no disposition to brag about. The new Senator had a head of blazing red hair which was as good as a stove on a cold night. He might have stepped bodily from the pages of _Life_ as regarded his contours, but his small, light-blue eye glittered with humour and shrewdness, while his great, slit of a mouth, which divided his face fairly in the middle, had lines of both sense and kindliness. He was enjoying himself hugely, and was not afraid to let anybody see it. Not so Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin, or the Secretary of State, but a Senator is a Senator to the Secretary of State, and Secretary Slater had in mind other treaties to be laid before the Senate, and so was fairly civil to Senator Mulligan. Mince Pie, himself, was much struck by the appearance of Eleanor Baldwin, who was easily the handsomest woman present, except her mother, but although Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin owned up that Eleanor was his daughter, he made no move to introduce Senator Mulligan to her.