The great spectacle of the crowded rooms made a deep impression on Cousin Patty.  To her this was no gathering of people who were eating too much and drinking too much, and who were taking from the night the hours which should have been given to sleep.  To her it was—­fairy-land; all of the women were lovely, all of the men celebrities—­and the gold of the lights, the pink of the azaleas which were everywhere in pots, the murmur of voices, the sweet insistence of the music in the balcony, the trail of laughter over it all—­these were magical things, which might disappear at any moment, and leave her among her boxes of wedding cake, after the clock struck twelve.

But it did not disappear, and she went home happy and too tired to talk.

At breakfast the next morning, Mary announced their programme for the day.

“Delilah has telephoned that she wants us to have lunch with her at the Capitol.  Her father is in Congress, Cousin Patty, and they will show us everything worth seeing.  Then we’ll go for a ride and have tea somewhere, and the General and Leila have asked us for dinner.  Shall you be too tired?”

“Tired?” Cousin Patty’s laugh trilled like the song of a bird.  “I feel as if I were on wings.”

Cousin Patty trod the steps of the historic Capitol with awe.  To her these halls of legislation were sacred to the memory of Henry Clay and of Daniel Webster.  Every congressman was a Personage—­and many a simple man, torn between his desire to serve his constituents, and his need to placate the big interests of his state, would have been touched by the faith of this little Southern lady in his integrity.

“A man couldn’t walk through here, with the statues of great men confronting him, and the pictures of other great men looking down on him, and the shades of those who have gone before him haunting the shadows and whispering from the galleries, without feeling that he was uplifted by their influence,” she whispered to Mary, as from the Member’s Gallery she gazed down at the languid gentlemen who lounged in their seats and listened with blank faces to one of their number who was speaking against time.

Colin Quale, who lunched with them, was delighted with her.

“She is an example of what I’ve been trying to show you,” he said to Delilah.  “She is so well bred that she absolutely lacks self-consciousness, and she is so clear-minded that you can’t muddy her thoughts with scandals of this naughty world.  She is a type worthy of your study.”

“Colin,” Delilah questioned, with a funny little smile, “is this a ‘back to grandma’ movement that you are planning for me?”

The pale little man flickered his blond lashes, but his face was grave.

“No,” he said, “but I want you to be abreast of the times.  There’s going to be a reaction from this reign of the bizarre.  We’ve gone long enough to harems and odalisques for our styles and our manners and presently we are going to see the blossoming of old-fashioned beauty.”