Calvert followed Beaufort’s glance and saw entering the room his friend d’Azay, at whose side, slowly and proudly, walked an old woman.  She bore herself with a nobility of carriage Calvert had never seen equalled, and her face, wrinkled and powdered and painted though it was, was the face of one who had been beautiful and used to command.  Her dark eyes were still brilliant and glittered humorously and shrewdly from beneath their bushy brows.  The lean, veined neck, bedecked with diamonds, was still poised proudly on the bent shoulders.  Her wrecked beauty was a perfect foil for the fresh loveliness of the young girl who, with a splendidly attired cavalier, followed closely behind her.

“Is she not a beauty?” said Beaufort, under his breath, to Calvert.  With a start the young man recognized the original of the miniature that d’Azay had shown him that last evening at Monticello, so many years ago.  It is to be doubted whether, in the interim, Calvert had bestowed a thought upon the beautiful French girl, but as he looked at the deep blue eyes shining divinely beneath the straight brows, at the crimson mouth, with its determined but lovely curves, at the cloud of dark hair about the white brow, it suddenly seemed to him as if the picture had never been out of his mind.  “The Lass with the Delicate Air” was before him, but changed.  The look of girlish immaturity was gone—­replaced by an imperious decision of manner.  A haughty, almost wayward, expression was on the smiling face—­a look of dawning worldliness and caprice.  ’Twas as if the thought which had once passed through Calvert’s mind had come true—­that countenance which had been capable of developing into noble loveliness or hardening into unpleasing, though striking, beauty, had somehow chosen the latter way.  The spiritual beauty seemed now in eclipse and only the earthly, physical beauty remained.

Calvert had opportunity to note these subtle changes which time had wrought in the original of the miniature while Mr. Jefferson bent low over the withered, beringed hand of the old Duchess, and he waited his turn to be presented to the ladies.  The ceremony over, he and d’Azay greeted each other as old friends and comrades-in-arms are wont to do.  They had scarce time to exchange a word, however, as Monsieur de Segur, coming up hurriedly, carried d’Azay and Beaufort away to where a group of young men were waiting for the last news of the elections.  Already politics were ousting every other topic of conversation in the salon.

As for Madame de St. Andre, she did not at all imitate her brother’s warmth of manner toward Calvert.  He was conscious of an almost contemptuous iciness in her greeting, and that mentally she was unfavorably comparing him, the simply dressed, serious young American before her, with the splendid courtiers who crowded around.  Certain it was that she was much more gracious in manner to Monsieur le Baron de St. Aulaire, who had accompanied her into the salon and still remained