Selma fixed her eyes on the President, expecting recognition.  Like her husband, the President possessed a gift of faces and the faculty of rallying all his energies to the important task of remembering who people were.  An usher asked and announced the names, but the Chief Magistrate’s perceptions were kept hard at work.  His “How do you do, Congressman Lyons?  I am very glad to see you here, Mrs. Lyons,” were uttered with a smiling spontaneity, which to his own soul meant a momentary agreeable relaxation of the nerves of memory, resembling the easy flourish with which a gymnast engaged in lifting heavy weights encounters a wooden dumb-bell.  But though his eyes and voice were flattering, Selma had barely completed the little bob of a courtesy which accompanied her act of shaking hands when she discovered that the machinery of the national custom was not to halt on their account, and that she must proceed without being able to renew the half flirtatious interview of the previous day.  She proceeded to courtesy to the President’s wife and to the row of wives of members of the Cabinet who were assisting.  Before she could adequately observe them, she found herself beyond and a part once more of a heterogeneous crush, the current of which she aimlessly followed on her husband’s arm.  She was suspicious of the device of courtesying.  Why had not the President’s wife and the Cabinet ladies shaken hands with her and given her an opportunity to make their acquaintance?  Could it be that the administration was aping foreign manners and adopting effete and aristocratic usages?

“What do we do now?” she asked of Lyons as they drifted along.

“I’d like to find Horace Elton and introduce him to you.  I caught a glimpse of him further on just before we reached the President.  Horace knows all the ropes and can tell us who everybody is.”

Selma had heard her husband refer to Horace Elton on several occasions in terms of respectful and somewhat mysterious consideration.  She had gathered in a general way that he was a far reaching and formidable power in matters political and financial, besides being the president and active organizer of the energetic corporation known as the Consumers’ Gas Light Company of their own state.  As they proceeded she kept her eyes on the alert for a man described by Lyons as short, heavily built, and neat looking, with small side whiskers and a close-mouthed expression.  When they were not far from the door of exit from the East room, some one on the edge of the procession accosted her husband, who drew her after him in that direction.  Selma found herself in a sort of eddy occupied by half a dozen people engaged in observing the passing show, and in the presence of Mr. and Mrs. Gregory Williams.  It was Mr. Williams who had diverted them.  He now renewed his acquaintance with her, exclaiming—­“My wife insisted that she had met you driving with some one she believed to be your husband.  I had heard that Congressman Lyons was on his bridal tour, and now everything is clear.  Flossy, you were right as usual, and it seems that our hearty congratulations are in order to two old friends.”