“It is nevertheless true,” said Calvert, quietly.

“And you told me you could make no fine phrases!” cried the young girl, with a gesture of pretended disappointment, and glancing with eyes full of amusement at Calvert.

“I pray you to still that spirit of mockery and listen to me,” said the young man, turning to her with passion.  As Adrienne looked at his white face and heard the sternness in his voice, the laughter faded from her eyes.

“I have never known the love of a mother or sister.  It is true what I have told you, whether you believe it or not, that you are the first and only woman I have loved.  And I think I have loved you ever since that night, years ago at Monticello, when d’Azay showed me your miniature.  I have loved you when you were kind and unkind to me.  I love you now, although I do not dare to hope that you love me in return.  I can offer you nothing,” he went on, hurriedly, seeing that she would have stopped him.  “I can offer you nothing but this love and a home over the sea.  ’Tis a pretty place, though it would doubtless seem to you poor enough after the splendors of Versailles and Paris,” he says, smiling ruefully; “but we might be happy there.  Is it impossible?”

As she looked into Calvert’s serious eyes, lighted with a glow she had never seen in them, there swept over her that admiration for him which she had felt before.  But she conquered it before it could conquer her.

“Impossible.  Ah, you Americans want everything.  You have triumphed over the English; do you wish to conquer France, too?  I am not worth being taken prisoner, Monsieur,” she says, suddenly.  “I am capricious and cold and ambitious.  I have never been taught to value love above position.  How can I change now?  How could I leave this France, and its court and pleasures, for the wilds of a new country?  No, no, Monsieur; I haven’t any of the heroine in me.”

“’Tis not exactly to the wilds of a new country that I would take you, Madame,” and Calvert smiled palely, in spite of himself, “but to a very fertile and beautiful land, where some of the kindest people in the world live.  But I do not deny that our life and pleasures are of the simplest—­’twould, in truth, be a poor exchange for the Marquise de St. Andre.”

“It might be a happy enough lot for some woman; for me, I own it would be a sacrifice,” said Adrienne, imperiously.

“Believe me, no one realizes more clearly than I do the sacrifice I would ask you to make, with only the honest love of a plain American gentleman for compensation.  There are no titles, no riches, no courtly pleasures in my Virginia; I can’t even offer you a reputation, a little fame.  But my life is before me, and I swear, if you will but give me some hope, I will yet bring you honors and some fortune to lay with my heart at your feet!  There have been days when you were so gracious that I have been tempted to believe I might win your love,” says poor Calvert.