The Senator said hastily that he feared—­he in fact was convinced—­that his duty during this session was required more at his desk, in the committee work, than in speaking, &c., &c.

“Ah,” said Carmen sadly, “it is true, then, all this that I have heard.  It is true that what they have told me,—­that you have given up the great party,—­that your voice is not longer heard in the old—­what you call this—­eh—­the old issues?”

“If any one has told you that, Miss De Haro,” responded the Senator sharply, “he has spoken foolishly.  You have been misinformed.  May I ask who—­”

“Ah!” said Carmen, “I know not!  It is in the air!  I am a stranger.  Perhaps I am deceived.  But it is of all.  I say to them, When shall I hear him speak?  I go day after day to the Capitol, I watch him,—­the great Emancipator,—­but it is of business, eh?—­it is the claim of that one, it is the tax, eh? it is the impost, it is the post-office, but it is the great speech of human rights—­never, never.  I say, ’How arrives all this?’ And some say, and shake their heads, ‘never again he speaks.’  He is what you call ‘played—­yes, it is so, eh?—­played out.’  I know it not,—­it is a word from Bos-ton, perhaps?  They say he has—­eh, I speak not the English well—­the party he has shaken, ’shook,’—­yes,—­he has the party ‘shaken,’ eh?  It is right,—­it is the language of Bos-ton, eh?”

“Permit me to say, Miss De Haro,” returned the Senator, rising with some asperity, “that you seem to have been unfortunate in your selection of acquaintances, and still more so in your ideas of the derivations of the English tongue.  The—­er—­the—­er—­expressions you have quoted are not common to Boston, but emanate, I believe, from the West.”

Carmen de Haro contritely buried everything but her black eyes in her shawl.

“No one,” he continued, more gently, sitting down again, “has the right to forecast from my past what I intend to do in the future, or designate the means I may choose to serve the principles I hold or the party I represent.  Those are my functions.  At the same time, should occasion—­or opportunity—­for we are within a day or two of the close of the Session—­”

“Yes,” interrupted Carmen, sadly, “I see,—­it will be some business, some claim, something for somebody,—­ah!  Madre de Dios,—­you will not speak, and I—­”

“When do you think of returning?” asked the Senator, with grave politeness; “when are we to lose you?”

“I shall stay to the last,—­to the end of the Session,” said Carmen.  “And now I shall go.”  She got up and pulled her shawl viciously over her shoulders, with a pretty pettishness, perhaps the most feminine thing she had done that evening.  Possibly, the most genuine.

The Senator smiled affably:  “You do not deserve to be disappointed in either case; but it is later than you imagine; let me help you on the shorter distance in my carriage; it is at the door.”