"Very possible!" answered Seaton, lightly--"But it wouldn't be missed! Come,--I'll walk with you half way down the hill."
He threw on a broad palmetto hat as a shield against the blazing sun, for it was now the full heat of the afternoon, while Gwent solemnly unfurled a white canvas umbrella which, folded, served him on occasion as a walking-stick. A greater contrast could hardly be imagined than that afforded by the two men,--the conventionally clothed, stiff-jointed Washington senator, and the fine, easy supple figure of his roughly garbed companion; and Manella, watching them descend the hill from a coign of vantage in the Plaza gardens, criticised their appearance in her own special way.
"Poof!" she said to herself, snapping her fingers in air--"He is so ugly!--that one man--so dry and yellow and old! But the other--he is a god!"
And she snapped her fingers again,--then kissed them towards the object of her adoration,--an object as unconscious and indifferent as any senseless idol ever worshipped by blind devotees.