He came out at once and raised her hand to his lips, murmuring a compliment as his grandfather might have done. He was only thirty-two, but his face was sallow and lined from trouble and fever. Otherwise he was very handsome, with his golden head and intellectual blue eyes, his haughty profile and tall figure, listlessly carried as it was. In spite of the fact that he took pride in dressing well, he always looked a little old-fashioned. When with Betty, invariably as smart as Paris and New York could make her, he almost appeared as if wearing his father's old clothes. His Southern accent and intonation were nearly as broad as a negro's. Betty had almost lost hers; she retained just enough to enrich and individualize without a touch of provincialism. She belonged to that small class of Americans whose ear-mark is the absence of all Americanisms. Mr. Emory looked perturbed. "There is something I should like to say," he remarked hesitatingly. "There is yet a quarter of an hour before dinner. I think this old hall with its portraits of your grandmothers is a good place to say it in--" "Molly has pressed you into service, I see. Let us have it out, by all means. Please straighten your necktie before you begin. You cannot possibly be impressive while it looks as if it were standing on one leg." "Please be serious, Betty dear. I am indeed most disturbed. It surely cannot be that you meant what you told your mother this morning,--that you intended to change the whole current of your life in such an unprecedented manner." "Great heavens! One would think I was about to go on the stage or enter a convent." "I would rather you did either than soil your mind with the politics of this country. I say nothing about there being no statesmen;--there is not an honest man in politics the length and breadth of the Union. The country is a sink of corruption, as far as politics are concerned. Every Congressman buys his seat or is put in as the agent of some disgraceful trust or syndicate or railroad corporation." Betty drew her eyelids together in a fashion that robbed her eyes of their coquetry and fire and made them look unpleasantly judicial. "Exactly how much do you know about American politics?" she asked coldly. "I have known you all my life and I never heard you mention them before--" "I never have considered them a fit subject for you to listen to--" "I have been in your library a great many times and I do not recall a copy of the Congressional Record. You have said often that you despise the newspapers and only read the telegrams; that the only paper you read through is the London _Times_. So, I repeat, what do you know about the American politics of to-day?" "What I have told you." "Where did you learn it? Do you ever go to the Senate or the House?"