The two men fell into conversation with one another, and Betty turned her attention to Senator North. He was standing alone for the moment, glancing about the room. His attitude was one of absolute repose; he did not look as if he ever had hurried or wasted his energies or lost his self-control in his life. His face was impenetrable; his eyes, black and piercing, were wholly without that limpidity which reveals depths and changes of expression; his mouth was somewhat contemptuous, and betrayed neither tenderness nor humour. If possible, he stood even more squarely on his feet than the other men. He had the powerful thick-set figure which invariably harbours strong passions. "I don't know whether I like him or not," thought Betty. "I think I don't--but perhaps I do. He might be made of New England rock, and he looks as if the earth could swallow him before he'd yield an inch. But I can feel his magnetism over here. Why have all these men so much magnetism? Is that, too, senatorial?" Senator North caught her eye at the moment, and turned at once to Lady Mary. A moment later he had been presented to Betty and they stood alone. "I once mended your hoop for you, when you were a little girl, just in front of your house; but I am afraid you have forgotten it." "Oh,--I think I do remember it. Yes--I do." She evoked the incident out of the mists of childish memories. "Was it you? I am afraid I was looking harder at the hoop than at its mender. But--I recall--I thought how kind you were." And then he inquired for her mother, and spoke pleasantly of his own and his wife's acquaintance with Mrs. Madison at Bar Harbor. Betty wondered afterward why she had thought his face repellent. His eyes defied investigation, but his mouth relaxed into a smile that was very kind, and his voice had almost a caress in it. But at the moment she was too eager to hear him express himself to receive a strong personal impression, and while she was casting about in her mind for a leader, she was obliged to give him her hand. "Good-night," she said with a little pout, "I am so sorry." "So am I," he said, smiling, and shaking her hand. "Good-night. I shall look forward to meeting you again soon." "Miss Madison, may I see you to your carriage?" asked Senator Burleigh. "I have tried to get near you ever since dinner," he said discontentedly, as they walked down the hall, "and now you are going. But you will come to the Senate to-morrow? Come right up to the door of the Senators' Gallery at precisely three o'clock and I will meet you there." A few moments later, Betty paused on her way to her own room and opened her mother's door softly. "Molly," she whispered. "Well?" asked a severe voice. "I went in to dinner with the son of one of papa's old Chamberlin companions, and he was simply charming. So were all the others, and I never met a man who could shake hands as well as Senator North. I had a heavenly time." Mrs. Madison groaned and turned her face to the wall.