Mrs. Sanderson had asked Armitage to return to her for a little Montana talk, as she put it, after the first rush of their entrance was over, and as he waited in the drawing-room for an opportunity of speaking to her, he chatted with Franzel, an attache of the Austrian embassy, to whom Sanderson had introduced him.  Franzel was a gloomy young man with a monocle, and he was waiting for a particular girl, who happened to be the daughter of the Spanish Ambassador.  And, this being his object, he had chosen his position with care, near the door of the drawing-room, and Armitage shared for the moment the advantage that lay in the Austrian’s point of view.  Armitage had half expected that the Claibornes would be present at a function as comprehensive of the higher official world as this, and he intended asking Mrs. Sanderson if she knew them as soon as opportunity offered.  The Austrian attache proved tiresome, and Armitage was about to drop him, when suddenly he caught sight of Shirley Claiborne at the far end of the broad hall.  Her head was turned partly toward him; he saw her for an instant through the throng; then his eyes fell upon Chauvenet at her side, talking with liveliest animation.  He was not more than her own height, and his profile presented the clean, sharp effect of a cameo.  The vivid outline of his dark face held Armitage’s eyes; then as Shirley passed on through an opening in the crowd her escort turned, holding the way open for her, and Armitage met the man’s gaze.

It was with an accented gravity that Armitage nodded his head to some declaration of the melancholy attache at this moment.  He had known when he left Geneva that he had not done with Jules Chauvenet; but the man’s prompt appearance surprised Armitage.  He ran over the names of the steamers by which Chauvenet might easily have sailed from either a German or a French port and reached Washington quite as soon as himself.  Chauvenet was in Washington, at any rate, and not only there, but socially accepted and in the good graces of Shirley Claiborne.

The somber attache was speaking of the Japanese.

“They must be crushed—­crushed,” said Franzel.  The two had been conversing in French.

“Yes, he must be crushed,” returned Armitage absent-mindedly, in English; then, remembering himself, he repeated the affirmation in French, changing the pronoun.

Mrs. Sanderson was now free.  She was a pretty, vivacious woman, much younger than her stalwart husband,—­a college graduate whom he had found teaching school near one of his silver mines.

“Welcome once more, constituent!  We’re proud to see you, I can tell you.  Our host owns some marvelous tapestries and they’re hung out to-night for the world to see.”  She guided Armitage toward the Secretary’s gallery on an upper floor.  Their host was almost as famous as a connoisseur as for his achievements in diplomacy, and the gallery was a large apartment in which every article of furniture, as well as the paintings, tapestries and specimens of pottery, was the careful choice of a thoroughly cultivated taste.