“The Senator and Rufus should be along soon,” said Mrs. Rhodes, as a maid brought Martinis. Ellen gulped one quickly, like a conjurer; then she took another off the tray and held it in one hand, occasionally sipping it in a most ladylike way. Whom was she trying to impress, I wondered. The lovely boy? or her mother? or the assorted politicos?

At first, I thought that possibly I was the one who was ill at ease but, by the time dinner was over and we were all seated in the drawing room having coffee beneath a virile painting of Senator Rhodes, I decided that something was obviously going all wrong and I surmised that it had to do with Ellen’s unexpected visit to Washington. Yet she was a perfect lady all evening. She was a trifle high by the time dinner was over but she spoke hardly at all … in fact, I’d never before seen her so restrained. The Senator was in good form but I had a feeling that the funny stories he told, and his loud rasping laughter were mechanical, a part of the paraphernalia of public office rather than sincere good spirits. He eyed Ellen and myself suspiciously all evening and I began to wonder just how long my job was going to last. I cursed Ellen to myself, fervently, furiously … her announcement that we were engaged had messed up everything.

The other guests seemed uneasy, except for Verbena Pruitt who matched the Senator laugh for laugh, joke for joke in a booming political voice.

Brandy was served with coffee and Senator Rhodes, turning to Roger Pomeroy whom he had ignored most of the evening, said, “Got some good cigars in the study. Want one?”

“No thank you, Lee,” said the other. “I’ve had to give up the habit … heart.”

“None of us are getting any younger!” snorted Miss Pruitt over her brandy, a hairpin falling softly to the carpet.… His eye is on the hairpin, I thought irreverently.

“I’m sound as a bell,” said the Senator striking his chest a careful blow. He did not look very sound, though. I noticed how pale he was, how one eyelid twitched, how his hands shook as he lighted a cigar for himself. He was an old man.

“The Senator has the stamina of ten men,” said little Sir Echo, Rufus Hollister, smugly.

“He’ll need it, too, if he’s going after that nomination,” said Miss Pruitt with a wink. “Won’t you, Lee?”

“Now who told you I was interested in the nomination?” said Senator Rhodes with an attempt at roguishness, not much of an attempt at that; he was obviously paying very little attention to us. He seemed preoccupied with some perplexing problem. His gray eyes looked unfocused.

While Verbena Pruitt and the Senator sparred, I talked to Mrs. Pomeroy who sat beside me on the couch. “Such a marvelous man, the Senator,” she said, her eyes glowing. “Have you known him long?” I shook my head, explaining my presence in the house.

“We’ve known the Rhodeses for just years, back in Talisman City. Were you ever there? No? It’s a wonderful residential town, almost Southern in a way, if you know what I mean. Except we’re getting quite a bit of industry there … my husband is in industry.”

“That’s very nice,” I said.

“We have a government contract,” said Mrs. Pomeroy importantly. She chattered on about herself, about their hometown, about the gunpowder business, about the latest developments in gunpowder: the new process Pomeroy Inc. had developed. While she talked I watched Ellen making time with lovely boy Langford on the couch opposite us. She was talking to him in a low voice and I could tell by the gleam in her eyes and the flush of confusion on his youthful puppydog face that before this night was over he would be forced to revise his estimate of the Rhodes family since, I was quite confident, long before Aurora showed her rosy head in the east, he would be engaged to the daughter of the house. He was a gone goose … for a few weeks anyway. I wondered if Mrs. Rhodes was on to her daughter. If she was she hardly showed it. She completely ignored her, speaking for the most part to Mr. Pomeroy and Rufus Hollister who sat on either side of her, their voices pitched a register below those of Senator Rhodes and Miss Pruitt who were now speaking of various scandals attendant upon the Denver Convention of 1908.

Just before midnight, Mrs. Rhodes stood up and announced that she was going to bed but that the others should take no notice of her if they wanted to remain up. “Good nights” were said and the hour for breakfast set. I was wondering whether I should go straight up to bed or wait for some sign from Ellen, when the Senator beckoned to me. “Like to have a little chat with you,” he said. “We can go up to my study.” I said good night to everyone. Ellen hardly noticed us go; she was already beginning to unravel poor Langdon, right there on the couch … all very ladylike, though: only an experienced eye like mine could tell what she was up to.

The Senator’s study was a corner room on the second floor with windows on two sides, oak paneling and bookcases filled with law books (which looked unopened), bound copies of the Congressional Record (fairly worn), and thick scrapbooks of newspaper clippings, much used, dating from 1912. There were photographs on the walls … less political, however, than those in his office. Photographs of his family at various moments in their lives … even one of Ellen as a bride. This surprised me since, as I remembered the story, she had eloped with an undesirable and had been brought home before, in the eyes of the law at least, he had soiled her.

The Senator seated himself at a desk in front of the windows. I sat down in a leather armchair beside the unlit fireplace; the room was chilly, I thought. I remember shivering.

“I must tell you frankly,” said the Senator, looking at me severely, “that I didn’t anticipate this … situation.”

“What situation?” I acted innocent.

“This business with my daughter … this ‘engagement.’ ”

“Sir, there is no business with your daughter,” I said, sitting up very straight.

“What do you mean, sir?” He was obviously going to out-courtesy me; our manners became more and more antebellum. “My daughter gave me to understand that you and she were to be married.”

“She is mistaken,” I said; the job was over, I decided sadly.

“You mean that you refuse, sir, to marry my daughter?”

“I mean, Senator,” said I, suddenly weary of the whole farce, “that I have never in my one year’s acquaintance with your daughter thought of marrying her nor has she ever thought of marrying me.”

He looked at me as though I were Drew Pearson investigating the inner workings of the Senate Committee on Spoils and Patronage. He blustered. “Do you mean to imply my daughter is a liar?”

“You know perfectly well what she is,” I snapped.

Leander Rhodes sagged in his chair; he looked a hundred years old at that moment. “Young man,” he said huskily, “I have misjudged you. I apologize.”

“It’s nothing, sir,” I mumbled. I felt genuinely sorry for the old bastard. He sighed heavily; then he lit another cigar.

“I’ll tell you a little about the coming campaign,” he said. I was enormously relieved: I wasn’t fired after all. “On Friday I shall announce my candidacy. So far the only two candidates officially in the field are both conservatives … neither is quite so conservative as I am, however, and neither has my following in the Midwest, among the farmers and small business people. Now I have been in this game long enough to know that high ideals are not enough if you want high office: you have to compromise to win and I want to win and I am willing to compromise with both Labor and the Left Wing, two elements which have never supported me before. You follow me?”