Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: magnetic Southern woman, but inwardly she was as strong and as sustaining as Thorndyke himself. Neither of them had a grain of mawkish sentimentality, and they were always differing playfully when they really differed seriously; but they never differed in their love and admiration of what was good. Baskerville took Anne out to dinner. He had several times had that good fortune, especially in Mrs. Thorndyke's house, and so far as dinner companions went he and Anne were well acquainted. Anne had been deeply mortified at Baskerville's ignoring her invitation to call, and the reason she at once suspected — his knowledge of her father's character and his share in furnishing information to the senatorial committee which was investigating Senator Clavering. She did not for one moment suspect that Baskerville put compulsion on himself to keep away from her house. She was conscious of a keen pleasure in his society, and a part of the gratification she felt at being asked to one of Mrs. Luttrell's intimate dinners was that Baskerville should know how Mrs. Luttrell esteemed her. The dinner fulfilled all of Anne's expectations. The Thorndykes were socially accomplished, and Judge Woodford had been a professional diner-out " Baskervili.k Took Anne Out To Iiinnkr.' since the days when President Buchanan had made him a third secretary of legation at Paris. Anne Clavering found herself adopted into the small circle, so different in birth and rearing from her own, by the freemasonry of good sense and good manners — in which she, however, was the equal of anybody. Mrs. Luttrell shone at her own table, and the restraint she put upon her own tongue revealed her to be, when she chose, a person of perfect tact. And, indeed, her most courageous speeches were matters of calculation, and w...