the face of their hostess, although they had chuckled with amusement when in the dressing-room.
Mrs. Baldwin, who stood in the background, wore more than her usual expression of icy pride, which meant that she was more than usually frightened. Eleanor's lovely face relaxed into a smile as she turned to the British Ambassador, who was a widower. He was a tall, handsome, high-bred-looking, elderly man, with a clean-shaven face, and a thin-lipped mouth, which had contorted itself into a grin on his first arrival in Washington, and the grin had become fixed and perpetual. He had no fortune beyond his salary and pension, he had rheumatism, liver complaint, nervous dyspepsia, chronic bronchitis, and a family of six unmarried daughters and four sons, ranging from thirty-six to sixteen years of age—yet Eleanor Baldwin would have jumped down his throat, and Mrs. Hill-Smith was going for him with the stealthy energy of a cat after the cream-jug.
Eleanor, putting on a roguish expression of countenance, said to the Ambassador:
"Ah, Mrs. Hill-Smith and I are becoming factors in diplomacy! At our dinner to-night, every man
