Page:The Author of Beltraffio, Pandora, Georgina's Reasons, The Path of Duty, Four Meetings (Boston, James R. Osgood & Co., 1885).djvu/128

124 general thing, not to engage the same evening with more than one new-comer, one visitor in the freshness of initiation. This was why Mrs. Bonnycastle's expression of a wish to introduce him to three young ladies had startled him a little; he saw a certain process, in which he flattered himself that he had become proficient, but which was after all tolerably exhausting, repeated for each of the damsels. After separating from his judicious Bostonian, he rather evaded Mrs. Bonnycastle, contenting himself with the conversation of old friends, pitched, for the most part, in a lower and more sceptical key.

At last he heard it mentioned that the President had arrived, had been some half an hour in the house, and he went in search of the illustrious guest, whose whereabouts, at Washington parties, was not indicated by a cluster of courtiers. He made it a point, whenever he found himself in company with the President, to pay him his respects, and he had not been discouraged by the fact that there was no association of ideas in the eye of the great man as he put out his hand, presidentially, and said, "Happy to see you, sir." Vogelstein felt himself taken for a mere subject, possibly for an office-seeker; and he used to reflect at such moments that the monarchical form had its merits; it provided a line of heredity for the faculty of quick recognition. He had now some difficulty in finding the chief magistrate, and ended by learning that he was in the tea-room, a small apartment devoted to light refection, near the entrance of