Page:Despotism and democracy; a study in Washington society and politics (IA despotismdemocra00seawiala).pdf/149

 like all social new-comers—timid in admitting people into her circle, and timid in turning them out—so she merely smiled brightly and said as they drove off:

"You'll come like a dear, and be as revolutionary as you please. Good-bye."

Constance, with her two men, lingered a minute, and then Crone left her. He yearned for his stenographer, and set out to seek him. Cathcart walked home with Constance and left her at the door. She was malicious enough to describe to him some of Mrs. Hill-Smith's charities, at which Cathcart was in an ecstasy of amusement.

Meanwhile Mrs. Hill-Smith went home with Eleanor Baldwin to what they called breakfast, but most Americans call luncheon. On the way the two women had discussed Constance Maitland cautiously—each afraid to let on to the other what she really thought—because, after all, Constance was intimate at the British Embassy.

Arrived at the Baldwin house—an imposing white stone mansion, with twenty-five bedrooms for a family of four, of whom one was a boy at school, a family which never had a visitor overnight—*