'Come, let us all go up to the drawing-room,' cried the lady. 'The President may find us there.'

She shepherded them upstairs, deftly avoiding a puddle on the landing, summoning a maidservant from somewhere to take their wraps, and drew Theo beside her to the sulky little fire that smoked at one end of the huge and meanly furnished room.

''Tis four years or more since I've seen you, child. Tell me all about yourself You have a husband, I know, and a baby. I do not need to ask whether he is an intelligent and beautiful child. He could not help it, with such a mother'. She rattled on, dimpling and laughing with so much spontaneity and kindliness that the sprightliness, which might have seemed unbecoming to a buxom middle-aged matron, became completely endearing.

'How well your father looks ! I protest, he gets younger and handsomer every time I see him. He is a remarkable man.'

'I'm glad you, at least, are his friend,' said Theo, with a touch of bitterness; 'he seems to have many undeserved enemies.'

'Oh lawkes—enemies! What statesman has not! Of course I am Colonel Burr's friend. Do I not owe him a great debt of gratitude? He introduced me to my Jemmy, you know'. She threw a fond glance toward the Secretary of State, who was deep in what appeared to be gloomy converse with Aaron.

'Here come the Gallatins,' she cried as the Secretary of the Treasury and his wife entered the room, unannounced. Dolly greeted them warmly, both hands outstretched, and introduced Theo, who examined the brilliant Swiss curiously, thinking that he was extremely ugly, with his bald head and long beaked nose. Nor was his manner engaging. He murmured, 'Enchanted, Madame,' in a heavy French voice and, turning his back, sauntered off to join Aaron and Madison in their corner.

Mrs. Gallatin impressed Theo not at all. She had been a typical American girl, and was now a typical American matron, a trifle colorless, a trifle bigoted, an excellent wife and mother.

Peder Pedersen, the Danish Chargé d'Affaires, arrived alone in a magnificent general's uniform, and made up for Gallatin's coldness by kissing Theo's hand with lingering gusto, attaching himself firmly to her side and breathing amorous platitudes down her neck. He fancied himself a great dog with the ladies.

Henry, the errant butler, reappeared with a rush in time to announce the last two invited couples. He might have spared himself the pains, for the names of the French and Spanish Ministers emerged as a kind of African gibberish that inspired Theo with an hysterical desire to giggle.

Turreau de Garambonville, Bonaparte's newly accredited representative, was a slim lizard of a man with cruel, glancing eyes, and dripping with lace and gold embroidery. His lady scuttled timidly behind him, her pale mouse's face crumpled into an expression of perpetual terror.