“Sorry I cannot accept,” answered the Mississippian, “but I am to make an important speech this afternoon—­”

“Oh, yes, I know.  The girls and I are coming to hear it.  But you have two hours’ time, and if you come we can all go over to the Senate together.  Now, Senator, humor us a little.  Don’t disappoint the girls and me.  We can all drive over to the Capitol in my carriage.”

The planter hesitated, then replied:  “All right.  I’ll be over, but it mustn’t be a very long luncheon.”

“Gone to eat; back by 3 o’clock,” he scratched quickly on a pad on the secretary’s desk, and departed.

Mrs. Spangler’s luncheons were equally as popular in Washington as Senator Langdon’s dinners.  The Mississippian and his daughters enjoyed the delicacies spread lavishly before them.

Time passed quickly.  The old planter enjoyed seeing his daughters have so happy a time, and he was not insensible to the charm of his hostess’ conversation, for Mrs. Spangler had studied carefully the art of ingratiating herself with her guests.

Suddenly realizing that he had probably reached the limit of the time he could spare, the Senator drew out his watch.

“What a stunning fob you wear,” quickly spoke Mrs. Spangler, reaching out her hand and taking the watch from her guest’s hands as the case snapped open.

“Oh, that’s Carolina’s doings,” laughed Langdon.  “She said the old gold chain that my grandfather left me was—­”

“Why, how lovely,” murmured Mrs. Spangler, glancing at the watch.  “We have plenty of time yet.  Won’t have to hurry.  Your time is the same as mine,” she added, nodding her head toward a French renaissance clock on the black marble mantel.

As the hostess did this she deftly turned back the hands of the Senator’s watch thirty-five minutes.

“Do you care to smoke, Senator,” Mrs. Spangler asked, as her guests concluded their repast, “if the young ladies do not object?”

Langdon inclined his head gratefully, and laughed.

“They wouldn’t be Southern girls, I reckon, if they didn’t want to see a man have everything to make him happy—­er, I beg pardon, Mrs. Spangler, I mean, comfortable.  Nobody that’s your guest could be unhappy.”

The hostess beamed on the chivalrous Southerner.

Langdon drew forth a thick black perfecto and settled back luxuriously in his chair, after another glance at Mrs. Spangler’s clock.  He was absorbed in a mental resume of his forthcoming speech and did not hear the next words of the woman, addressed pointedly to his daughters.

“Do you know, really, why this luncheon was given to-day?” she queried.  Then she continued before Carolina and Hope Georgia could formulate replies: 

“Because your father and I wanted to take this opportunity to announce to you—­our engagement.”

The speaker smiled her sweetest smile.

The two girls gazed at each other in uncontrollable amazement, then at Mrs. Spangler, then at their father, who had turned partly away from the table and was gazing abstractedly at the ceiling.