



Produced by Al Haines.




[Illustration: Cover art]




       "Her glance, quick yet soft, was much the prettiest thing
             of the sort Sir Percy had ever seen" (Page 33)
             (missing from book)...... _Frontispiece_




                               THE WHIRL

                              A ROMANCE OF
                           WASHINGTON SOCIETY


                                   BY

                             FOXCROFT DAVIS



                         WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
                          HARRISON FISHER AND
                           B. MARTIN JUSTICE



                                NEW YORK
                          DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
                                  1909




                            COPYRIGHT, 1907
                    BY THE WASHINGTON HERALD COMPANY

                            COPYRIGHT, 1909
                        BY DODD, MEAD & COMPANY

                          Published, May, 1909




                            *ILLUSTRATIONS*


"Her glance, quick yet soft, was much the prettiest thing of the sort
Sir Percy had ever seen" (page 33) (missing from book)......
_Frontispiece_

"'It is the old story. You are worthy to marry her, but I am not worthy
to speak to her'"

"'I shall leave this house to-morrow morning, never to re-enter it'"




                                  *I*


Few men have the goal of their ambition in sight at thirty-eight years
of age.  But Sir Percy Carlyon had, when he was appointed First
Secretary of the British Embassy at Washington, with a very
well-arranged scheme worked out by which, at the end of four years, he
was to succeed his uncle, Lord Baudesert, the present Ambassador.  This
realisation of his dreams came to Sir Percy on a December afternoon dark
and sharp, as he tramped over the frozen ground through the stark and
leafless woods, which may yet be found close to Washington.

He was a great walker, this thin, sinewy Englishman with a sun-browned
skin, burnt by many summers in India and weather-beaten by many winters
in the snowbound depths of the Balkans.  He had the straight features
and clear, scintillant eyes which are the marks of race among his kind,
but no one would have been more surprised than Sir Percy if he had been
called handsome.  Within him, on this bleak December afternoon, was a
sensation strange to him after many years: the feeling of hope and
almost of joy.  He stopped in the silent heart of the woods, and,
leaning against the gnarled trunk of a live oak, thrust his hands into
his pockets and glanced, with brightening eyes, towards the west.  A
faint, rosy line upon the horizon was visible through the naked woods;
all else in sky and earth was dun-.

To Sir Percy Carlyon this thread of radiance was a promise of the
future.  This was, to him, almost the first moment of retrospection
since the day, two months before, when, in the Prime Minister's rooms in
Downing Street, a new life in a new country opened before him.  Since
then--amid the official and personal preparations necessary to take up
his post, his seven days on the Atlantic, during which he worked hard on
pressing business, the necessary first visits upon his arrival--Sir
Percy had scarcely enjoyed an hour to himself.  He had found the Embassy
overwhelmed with affairs, about which his uncle, Lord Baudesert, coolly
refused to bother himself, but which Sir Percy, as a practical man, felt
obliged to take up and carry through.  That day, only, had he, by hard
and systematic work, caught up what was called by Lord Baudesert, with a
grin, the "unfinished business" at the British Embassy, but which really
meant the neglected business of a lazy, clever old diplomatist who never
did to-day what he could put off until to-morrow.

Lord Baudesert had been many years at Washington, and had a thorough
knowledge not only of the affairs of the American people, but of their
temper, their prejudices and their passions.  In an emergency his
natural abilities, and a kind of superhuman adroitness which he
possessed, together with the vast fund of knowledge that he had
accumulated, but rarely used, made him a valuable person to the Foreign
Office.  However, as soon as the emergency passed Lord Baudesert
returned to his usual occupation of studying the American newspapers and
anything else which could add to the already vast stock of knowledge
which he possessed, but rarely condescended to use.

The Embassy was presided over by Lord Baudesert's widowed sister, Mrs.
Vereker, an amiable old sheep of the early Victorian type. Then there
were three lamb-like Vereker girls, Jane, Sarah and Isabella, all
likewise early Victorian, who regarded their uncle as a combination of
Bluebeard and Solomon, and altogether the most important and the most
terrifying person on this planet.  Lord Baudesert's favourite instrument
of torture to the ladies of his family was the threat to marry an
American widow with billions of money.  How this would have unfavourably
affected her the excellent Mrs. Vereker could not have told to save her
life--but the mere hint always gave her acute misery.

The secretaries of the Embassy were very well-meaning young men, who
attended to their work as well as they knew how, but as Lord Baudesert
seldom took the trouble to read a document, and would not sign his name
to anything which he had not read, it was difficult to get business
transacted.  When Sir Percy Carlyon was getting his instructions from
the Prime Minister concerning his post of First Secretary at Washington
the Premier had remarked:

"Your uncle, you know, is the laziest man God ever made, but he is also
one of the cleverest. No living Englishman knows as much about American
affairs as Lord Baudesert, or has ever made himself so acceptable to the
American people, but when he isn't doing us the greatest service in the
world, he lets everything go hang.  We are sending you to Washington to
get some work done.  I hear you can bully Lord Baudes