“Why?” asked Brant demurely.

“Too much West Point starch around to suit me,” returned Hooker darkly.  “And too many spies!”

“Spies?” echoed Brant abstractedly, with a momentary reminiscence of Miss Faulkner.

“Yes, spies,” continued Hooker, with dogged mystery.  “One half of Washington is watching t’other half, and, from the President’s wife down, most of the women are secesh!”

Brant suddenly fixed his keen eyes on his guest.  But the next moment he reflected that this was only Jim Hooker’s usual speech, and possessed no ulterior significance.  He smiled again, and said, more gently,—­

“And how is Mrs. Hooker?”

Mr. Hooker fixed his eyes on the ceiling, rose, and pretended to look out of the window; then, taking his seat again by the table, as if fronting an imaginary audience, and pulling slowly at his gauntlets after the usual theatrical indication of perfect sangfroid, said,—­

“There ain’t any!”

“Good heavens!” said Brant, with genuine emotion.  “I beg your pardon.  Really, I”—­

“Mrs. Hooker and me are divorced,” continued Hooker, slightly changing his attitude, and leaning heavily on his sabre, with his eyes still on his fanciful audience.  “There was, you understand”—­lightly tossing his gauntlet aside—­“incompatibility of temper—­and—­we—­parted!  Ha!”

He uttered a low, bitter, scornful laugh, which, however, produced the distinct impression in Brant’s mind that up to that moment he had never had the slightest feeling in the matter whatever.

“You seemed to be on such good terms with each other!” murmured Brant vaguely.

“Seemed!” said Hooker bitterly, glancing sardonically at an ideal second row in the pit before him, “yes—­seemed!  There were other differences, social and political.  You understand that; you have suffered, too.”  He reached out his hand and pressed Brant’s, in heavy effusiveness.  “But,” he continued haughtily, lightly tossing his glove again, “we are also men of the world; we let that pass.”

And it was possible that he found the strain of his present attitude too great, for he changed to an easier position.

“But,” said Brant curiously, “I always thought that Mrs. Hooker was intensely Union and Northern?”

“Put on!” said Hooker, in his natural voice.

“But you remember the incident of the flag?” persisted Brant.

“Mrs. Hooker was always an actress,” said Hooker significantly. 
“But,” he added cheerfully, “Mrs. Hooker is now the wife of Senator
Boompointer, one of the wealthiest and most powerful Republicans in
Washington—­carries the patronage of the whole West in his vest pocket.”

“Yet, if she is not a Republican, why did she”—­began Brant.

“For a purpose,” replied Hooker darkly.  “But,” he added again, with greater cheerfulness, “she belongs to the very elite of Washington society.  Goes to all the foreign ambassadors’ balls, and is a power at the White House.  Her picture is in all the first-class illustrated papers.”