But before he had left the house, while mingling with the crowd in one of the larger rooms, he saw the President reappear beside an important, prosperous-looking figure, on whom the kindly giant was now smiling with humorous toleration.  He noticed the divided attention of the crowd; the name of Senator Boompointer was upon every lip; he was nearly face to face with that famous dispenser of place and preferment—­this second husband of Susy!  An indescribable feeling—­half cynical, half fateful—­came over him.  He would not have been surprised to see Jim Hooker join the throng, which now seemed to him to even dwarf the lonely central figure that had so lately touched him!  He wanted to escape it all!

But his fate brought him to the entrance at the same moment that Boompointer was leaving it, and that distinguished man brushed hastily by him as a gorgeous carriage, drawn by two spirited horses, and driven by a resplendent negro coachman, dashed up.  It was the Boompointer carriage.

A fashionably-dressed, pretty woman, who, in style, bearing, opulent contentment, and ingenuous self-consciousness, was in perfect keeping with the slight ostentation of the equipage, was its only occupant.  As Boompointer stepped into the vehicle, her blue eyes fell for an instant on Brant.  A happy, childlike pink flush came into her cheeks, and a violet ray of recognition and mischief darted from her eyes to his.  For it was Susy.

CHAPTER II.

When Brant returned to his hotel there was an augmented respect in the voice of the clerk as he handed him a note with the remark that it had been left by Senator Boompointer’s coachman.  He had no difficulty in recognizing Susy’s peculiarly Brobdingnagian school-girl hand.

“Kla’uns, I call it real mean!  I believe you just hoped I wouldn’t know you.  If you’re a bit like your old self you’ll come right off here—­this very night!  I’ve got a big party on—­but we can talk somewhere between the acts!  Haven’t I growed?  Tell me!  And my! what a gloomy swell the young brigadier is!  The carriage will come for you—­so you have no excuse.”

The effect of this childish note upon Brant was strangely out of proportion to its triviality.  But then it was Susy’s very triviality—­so expressive of her characteristic irresponsibility—­which had always affected him at such moments.  Again, as at Robles, he felt it react against his own ethics.  Was she not right in her delightful materialism?  Was she not happier than if she had been consistently true to Mrs. Peyton, to the convent, to the episode of her theatrical career, to Jim Hooker—­even to himself?  And did he conscientiously believe that Hooker or himself had suffered from her inconsistency?  No!  From all that he had heard, she was a suitable helpmate to the senator, in her social attractiveness, her charming ostentations, her engaging vanity that disarmed suspicion, and her lack of responsibility even in her partisanship.  Nobody ever dared to hold the senator responsible for her promises, even while enjoying the fellowship of both, and it is said that the worthy man singularly profited by it.  Looking upon the invitation as a possible distraction to his gloomy thoughts, Brant resolved to go.