Produced by Al Haines. [Illustration: Cover art] "Her glance, quick yet soft, was much the prettiest thing of the sort Sir Percy had ever seen" (Page 33) (missing from book) . . . . . . _Frontispiece_ THE WHIRL A ROMANCE OF WASHINGTON SOCIETY BY FOXCROFT DAVIS WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY HARRISON FISHER AND B. MARTIN JUSTICE NEW YORK DODD, MEAD & COMPANY 1909 COPYRIGHT, 1907 BY THE WASHINGTON HERALD COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1909 BY DODD, MEAD & COMPANY Published, May, 1909 *ILLUSTRATIONS* "Her glance, quick yet soft, was much the prettiest thing of the sort Sir Percy had ever seen" (page 33) (missing from book) . . . . . . _Frontispiece_ "’It is the old story. You are worthy to marry her, but I am not worthy to speak to her’" "’I shall leave this house to-morrow morning, never to re-enter it’" *I* Few men have the goal of their ambition in sight at thirty-eight years of age. But Sir Percy Carlyon had, when he was appointed First Secretary of the British Embassy at Washington, with a very well-arranged scheme worked out by which, at the end of four years, he was to succeed his uncle, Lord Baudesert, the present Ambassador. This realisation of his dreams came to Sir Percy on a December afternoon dark and sharp, as he tramped over the frozen ground through the stark and leafless woods, which may yet be found close to Washington. He was a great walker, this thin, sinewy Englishman with a sun-browned skin, burnt by many summers in India and weather-beaten by many winters in the snowbound depths of the Balkans. He had the straight features and clear, scintillant eyes which are the marks of race among his kind, but no one would have been more surprised than Sir Percy if he had been called handsome. Within him, on this bleak December afternoon, was a sensation strange to him after many years: the feeling of hope and almost of joy. He stopped in the silent heart of the woods, and, leaning against the gnarled trunk of a live oak, thrust his hands into his pockets and glanced, with brightening eyes, towards the west. A faint, rosy line upon the horizon was visible through the naked woods; all else in sky and earth was dun-coloured.