Page:The Author of Beltraffio, Pandora, Georgina's Reasons, The Path of Duty, Four Meetings (Boston, James R. Osgood & Co., 1885).djvu/134

130 "Miss Day was watching him!" one of the foreign ministers exclaimed, "and we flattered ourselves that her attention was all with us."

"I mean before," said the girl, "while I was talking with the President."

At this the gentlemen began to laugh, and one of them remarked that this was the way the absent were sacrificed, even the great; while another said that he hoped Vogelstein was duly flattered.

"Oh, I was watching the President too," said Pandora. " I have got to watch him. He has promised me something."

"It must be the mission to England," the judge of the Supreme Court suggested. "A good position for a lady; they 've got a lady at the head over there."

"I wish they would send you to my country," one of the foreign ministers suggested. "I would immediately get recalled."

"Why, perhaps in your country I would n't speak to you. It's only because you're here," the girl returned with a gay familiarity which, with her, was evidently but one of the arts of defence. "You 'll see what mission it is when it comes out. But I will speak to Count Vogelstein anywhere," she went on. "He is an older friend than any one here. I have known him in difficult days."

"Oh, yes, on the ocean," said the young man, smiling. "On the watery waste, in the tempest!"

"Oh, I don't mean that so much; we had a beautiful voyage, and there was n't any tempest. I mean