“Goslings, are there?  I believe you,” said Belch to himself, inwardly chuckling as he read and folded Abel’s letter.

“Ally, hey?  Well, that is good,” he continued, the chuckle rising into a laugh.  “Well, well, I thought Abel Newt was smart; but he doesn’t even suspect, and I have played a deeper game than was needed.”

“I guess that will fix him,” said Abel, as he looked over his letter, laughed, folded it, and sent it off.

Mr. Ele by many a devious path at length approached the object of his visit, and hoped that Mr. Newt would flesh his maiden sword in the coming fray.  Abel said, without removing his cigar, “I think I shall speak.”

He said no more.  Mr. Ele shook his foot with inward triumph.

“The Widow Jones will do a smashing business this winter, I suppose,” he said, at length.

“Likely,” replied Newt.

“Know her well?”

“Pretty well.”

Mr. Ele retired, for he had learned all that his friend meant he should know.

“Do I know Delilah?” laughed Abel Newt to himself, as he said “Good-night, Ele.”

Yes he did.  He had followed up his note to General Belch by calling upon the superb Mrs. Delilah Jones.  But neither the skillful wig, nor the freshened cheeks, nor the general repairs which her personal appearance had undergone, could hide from Abel the face of Kitty Dunham, whom he had sometimes met in other days when suppers were eaten in Grand Street and wagons were driven to Cato’s.  He betrayed nothing, however; and she wrote to General Belch that she had disguised herself so that he did not recall her in the least.

Abel was intensely amused by the espionage of the Honorable Mr. Ele and the superb Jones.  He told his colleague how greatly he had been impressed by the widow—­that she was really a fascinating woman, and, by Jove! though she was a widow, and no longer twenty, still there were a good many worse things a man might do than fall in love with her.  ’Pon honor, he did not feel altogether sure of himself, though he thought he was hardened if any body was.

Mr. Ele smiled, and said, in a serious way, that she was a splendid woman, and if Abel persisted he must look out for a rival.

“For I thought it best to lead him on,” he wrote to his friend Belch.

As for the lady herself, Abel was so dexterous that she really began to believe that she might do rather more for herself than her employers.  He brought to bear upon her the whole force of the fascination which had once been so irresistible; and, like a blowpipe, it melted out the whole conspiracy against him without her knowing that she had betrayed it.  The point of her instructions from Belch was that she was to persuade him to be constant to the Grant at any price.

“To-morrow, then, Mr. Newt,” she said to him, as they stood together in the crush of a levee at the White House—­“our bill is to be reported, and favorably.”