Her laughter checked her reply a moment, and by the time she had recovered herself the young lady from Boston, with whom Vogelstein had been talking, stood there to take leave. This, for an American type, was an old one, he was sure; and the process of parting between the guest and her hostess had an ancient elaboration. Count Otto waited a little; then he turned away and walked up to Pandora Day, whose group of interlocutors had now been re-enforced by a gentleman who had held an important place in the cabinet of the late occupant of the presidential chair. He had asked Mrs. Bonnycastle if she were “all alone”; but there was nothing in her present situation to show her for solitary. She wasn’t sufficiently alone for our friend’s taste; but he was impatient and he hoped she’d give him a few words to himself. She recognised him without a moment’s hesitation and with the sweetest smile, a smile matching to a shade the tone in which she said: “I was watching you. I wondered if you weren’t going to speak to me.” “Miss Day was watching him!” one of the foreign ministers exclaimed; “and we flattered ourselves that her attention was all with us.” “I mean before,” said the girl, “while I was talking with the President.” At which the gentlemen began to laugh, one of them remarking that this was the way the absent were sacrificed, even the great; while another put on record that he hoped Vogelstein was duly flattered. “Oh I was watching the President too,” said Pandora. “I’ve got to watch _him_. He has promised me something.” “It must be the mission to England,” the judge of the Supreme Court suggested. “A good position for a lady; they’ve got a lady at the head over there.” “I wish they would send you to my country,” one of the foreign ministers suggested. “I’d immediately get recalled.” “Why perhaps in your country I wouldn’t speak to you! It’s only because you’re here,” the ex-heroine of the _Donau_ returned with a gay familiarity which evidently ranked with her but as one of the arts of defence. “You’ll see what mission it is when it comes out. But I’ll speak to Count Vogelstein anywhere,” she went on. “He’s an older friend than any right here. I’ve known him in difficult days.” “Oh yes, on the great ocean,” the young man smiled. “On the watery waste, in the tempest!” “Oh I don’t mean that so much; we had a beautiful voyage and there wasn’t any tempest. I mean when I was living in Utica. That’s a watery waste if you like, and a tempest there would have been a pleasant variety.” “Your parents seemed to me so peaceful!” her associate in the other memories sighed with a vague wish to say something sympathetic. “Oh you haven’t seen them ashore! At Utica they were very lively. But that’s no longer our natural home. Don’t you remember I told you I was working for New York? Well, I worked—I had to work hard. But we’ve moved.” Count Otto clung to his interest. “And I hope they’re happy.”