“He is fairly hooked, poor thing.  I can play him at my leisure and land him when I choose.  He was all ready to be caught, days and days ago —­I saw that, very well.  He will vote for our bill—­no fear about that; and moreover he will work for it, too, before I am done with him.  If he had a woman’s eyes he would have noticed that the spray of box had grown three inches since he first gave it to me, but a man never sees anything and never suspects.  If I had shown him a whole bush he would have thought it was the same.  Well, it is a good night’s work:  the committee is safe.  But this is a desperate game I am playing in these days —­a wearing, sordid, heartless game.  If I lose, I lose everything—­even myself.  And if I win the game, will it be worth its cost after all?  I do not know.  Sometimes I doubt.  Sometimes I half wish I had not begun.  But no matter; I have begun, and I will never turn back; never while I live.”

Mr. Buckstone indulged in a reverie as he walked homeward: 

“She is shrewd and deep, and plays her cards with considerable discretion—­but she will lose, for all that.  There is no hurry; I shall come out winner, all in good time.  She is the most beautiful woman in the world; and she surpassed herself to-night.  I suppose I must vote for that bill, in the end maybe; but that is not a matter of much consequence the government can stand it.  She is bent on capturing me, that is plain; but she will find by and by that what she took for a sleeping garrison was an ambuscade.”

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

          Now this surprising news caus’d her fall in ’a trance,
          Life as she were dead, no limbs she could advance,
          Then her dear brother came, her from the ground he took
          And she spake up and said, O my poor heart is broke.

The Barnardcastle Tragedy.

“Don’t you think he is distinguished looking?”

“What!  That gawky looking person, with Miss Hawkins?”

“There.  He’s just speaking to Mrs. Schoonmaker.  Such high-bred negligence and unconsciousness.  Nothing studied.  See his fine eyes.”

“Very.  They are moving this way now.  Maybe he is coming here.  But he looks as helpless as a rag baby.  Who is he, Blanche?”

“Who is he?  And you’ve been here a week, Grace, and don’t know?  He’s the catch of the season.  That’s Washington Hawkins—­her brother.”

“No, is it?”

“Very old family, old Kentucky family I believe.  He’s got enormous landed property in Tennessee, I think.  The family lost everything, slaves and that sort of thing, you know, in the war.  But they have a great deal of land, minerals, mines and all that.  Mr. Hawkins and his sister too are very much interested in the amelioration of the condition of the colored race; they have some plan, with Senator Dilworthy, to convert a large part of their property to something another for the freedmen.”