Clay reached the President's Palace during the supper-hour, and found Mr.Langham and his daughter at the President's table.
Madame Alvarez pointed to a place for him beside Alice Langham, who held up her hand in welcome.``You were very foolish to rush off like that,'' she said.
``It wasn't there,'' said Clay, crowding into the place beside her.
``No, it was here in the carriage all the time.Captain Stuart found it for me.''
``Oh, he did, did he?'' said Clay; ``that's why I couldn't find it.I am hungry,'' he laughed, ``my ride gave me an appetite.''
He looked over and grinned at Stuart, but that gentleman was staring fixedly at the candles on the table before him, his eyes filled with concern.Clay observed that Madame Alvarez was covertly watching the young officer, and frowning her disapproval at his preoccupation.So he stretched his leg under the table and kicked viciously at Stuart's boots.Old General Rojas, the Vice-President, who sat next to Stuart, moved suddenly and then blinked violently at the ceiling with an expression of patient suffering, but the exclamation which had escaped him brought Stuart back to the present, and he talked with the woman next him in a perfunctory manner.
Miss Langham and her father were waiting for their carriage in the great hall of the Palace as Stuart came up to Clay, and putting his hand affectionately on his shoulder, began pointing to something farther back in the hall.To the night-birds of the streets and the noisy fiacre drivers outside, and to the crowd of guests who stood on the high marble steps waiting for their turn to depart, he might have been relating an amusing anecdote of the ball just over.
``I'm in great trouble, old man,'' was what he said.``I must see you alone to-night.I'd ask you to my rooms, but they watch me all the time, and I don't want them to suspect you are in this until they must.Go on in the carriage, but get out as you pass the Plaza Bolivar and wait for me by the statue there.''