At the great white building on Capitol Hill history was being steadily and rapidly made. One subject, not wholly political, aroused deep interest on the House side as well as in the Senate. The investigating committee on the K. F. R. land grants had already held several meetings, and it was known that for some reason of political expedience the party in power wished the question settled at the earliest possible date. There was, among certain senators who did not really understand the matter, a disposition to throw Clavering overboard like Jonah. Those senators who really understood the question reckoned Clavering to be perfectly deserving of a long term in state’s prison. There was no hope of acquittal for him from the moment the whole evidence against him was known to be available; and for this nobody deserved so much credit as Richard Baskerville. He had been more than two years unravelling the tangled web of litigation, and only a very astute lawyer, with money and time to spend on it, could have done it at all. It was quite clear now, compact and available. A lesser man than Clavering would at this stage of the proceedings have resigned from the Senate and decamped. Clavering, however, was incapable of understanding defeat, and had no more thought of surrender than the Old Guard at Waterloo. His entertainments, always lavish and frequent, grew more lavish and more frequent. Washington was not big enough to supply half the luxuries he required; New York was called upon, and Paris and Vienna, for rarities of all sorts to make the dinners and balls at the Claverings’ more brilliant, more startling. Élise and Lydia revelled in this; Anne’s good taste and good sense revolted against it. She read every word in the newspapers concerning her father, and she began to see that ruin and disgrace were threatening him with fearful quickness. Even Reginald Clavering, dull and self–centred, became frightened and ashamed. Not so Clavering; he was not the man to “roll darkling down the torrent of his fate.” He would go if he had to go, with all the splendor which unlimited money and assurance could contrive. It gave him little spells of laughter and amusement when he thought how much Washington would miss his princely entertaining, in case he should be struck down by his enemies. If that should occur, however, he reflected that Washington was not the only city, nor America even the only country, in the world. He was not really much grieved at the possibility of leaving public life, although he fought with a gladiator’s courage against being thrown out. He had accomplished much of what he had gone into public life for,—the making of a vaster fortune than the vast one he had before. And then, that new dream which had come into his life—Elizabeth Darrell. If he should win her, as he fully intended and expected, she might not find Washington a very comfortable place of residence. He would give her a splendid hotel in Paris, or a grand establishment in London.