Manslaughter by Alice Duer Miller

It was great fun traveling with Albee. He had engaged a drawing-room on the Congressional Limited, and with a forethought, old-fashioned but agreeable, had provided newspapers and magazines and a box of candy. His secretary was hovering near with letters to be signed. The conductor came and asked whether everything was all right, governor, and people passed the door deliberately, staring in to get a glimpse of the great man; and Lydia could see that they were murmuring, "That's Albee, you know, he's going down to testify."

Lydia did not know Washington at all. She had been taken there once as a child by one of the energetic young American governesses -- had gone to Mt. Vernon by boat and home by trolley, had whispered in the rotunda and looked at the statues and seen the House and been secretly glad that the Senate was in secret session so that she couldn't see that, and there would be time to go up the monument -- something that she really had enjoyed -- not only on account of the view, but because her governess was afraid of elevators and was terrified in the slow, jerky ascent. Then during the period of her engagement to Ilseboro she had been at one or two dinners at the British embassy. But that had been long ago, before the days of her discovery of the Federal Constitution. Of governmental Washington she knew nothing.