d
Colonel Burr were supposed to have business with the Spanish Minister,
who, though he had severed diplomatic relations with our Government some
months since, yet lingered at Philadelphia.

Significant as should have been this report to one with my interests and
information, I must confess that not even the mention of Senor Vallois
drew second thought from me. For the time being my whole intent was to
find myself once more in the presence of the senorita. The question was
how and where? She was not to be seen in society, and I was not quite so
mad as to thrust myself in upon her at her retreat.

Hope flamed up again when all seemed darkest. As is well known to all
people of information, the Sunday assemblage in the Hall of
Representatives at the Capitol is frequently varied by the preaching of
distinguished clergymen of various sects and denominations. Being rather
given to Free Thought, though not to Atheism, I had thus far refrained
from attending these quasi-official services, much as I had heard about
them as the social levees of the city.

Chance, however, brought to Washington a noted Catholic bishop, and the
announcement that he would preach the following Sabbath in place of the
chaplain stirred me with the hope of a pleasant possibility. That Sunday
I went early to the assemblage hall, dressed in my best attire, my chin
swathed high enough by my pudding cravat to shame a London beau, my
trousers cut to the most modish, baggy shape and flapping loosely about
my shins.

Early as I arrived, I found no small part of the crowd ahead of me, and
I had to thrust and elbow my way here and there among the beaux, across
the hall, before I could satisfy myself that the senorita was not
present. Dashed, but by no means disheartened, I chose a post of vantage
on the elevated edge of a niche, from which I could watch the entrance.

Already I had had occasion to make my bows to the fashionably costumed
dames and misses whose gay talk and manners lent to the Hall more the
aspect of a ballroom than that of a house of worship or a legislative
chamber. As the company thronged in the gallant Representatives yielded
their seats to the ladies and stood beside them if acquainted, or, if
the fair ones came attended, left the aisles to the escorts and
withdrew into the lobbies or warmed themselves at the fireplaces.

Seeing the rapidity with which the seats were being filled by the
ladies, it occurred to me to pay one of the House