“I would like to hear more of your poet,” she said, gently, when Calvert had finished speaking.  “I do not remember to have heard Monsieur Chenier speak of him or the Abbe Delille, either.  The Abbe is often good enough to read poetry to us in my aunt’s drawing-room, but ’tis usually his own,” and she laughed mischievously.  “The poor gentleman makes a great fuss about it, too.  He must have his dish of tea at his elbow and the shades all drawn, with only the firelight or a single candle to read by, and when we are all quaking with fear at the darkness and solemn silence, he begins to recite, and imagines that ’tis his verses which have so moved us!” and she laughed merrily again.  “You shall come and read to us from your young Scotch poet and snatch the Abbe’s laurels from him!  Indeed, my aunt has already conceived a great liking for you, Monsieur, so she told me last night on her way from Madame Necker’s, and intends to urge upon Mr. Jefferson to bring you to see her immediately.”  She smiled at Calvert so graciously and with such unaffected good-humor that he looked at her with delight and wonder at the change come over her.  Once more the mask was down.  All the haughtiness and capricious anger had faded away, and Calvert thought he had never beheld a creature so charming and so beautiful.  Her dark eyes shone like stars in a wintry sky, and, though the air was frosty, the roses bloomed in her cheeks.  As he looked at her there was a troubled smile on his lips and he felt a sudden quickening of his pulse.  A curious sense of remoteness from her impressed itself upon him.  He looked around at the unfamiliar scene, at the towering palace walls on his right, at the crowds of spectators on the river’s edge, at the brilliant throng of skaters, at the great stone bridge spanning the frozen river over which people were forever passing to and fro, some hurriedly, some with leisure to lean over the parapet for a moment to watch the unaccustomed revelry below.  And as he looked, another scene, which he had so lately left, rose before him.  In fancy he could see the broad and shining Potomac, on its banks the stately old colonial house with its colonnaded wings, something after the fashion of General Washington’s mansion at near-by Mount Vernon, the green lawns stretching away from the portico and the fragrant depths of the woods beyond.  A voice recalled him from his abstraction.  It was that of Monsieur de St. Aulaire, who, as they neared the crowded terrace of the Tuileries gardens, emerged from a group of skaters and, approaching Calvert and Madame de St. Andre, made a profound bow before the latter.

“Is Madame de St. Andre to show favor to none but Monsieur Calvert?” he asks, in a low voice that had an accent of mockery in it as he bent over the young girl’s hand.

“’Tis no favor that I show Monsieur Calvert,” she replied, smiling.  “’Tis a privilege to skate with so perfect a master of the art.”

“I shall be most happy to take a lesson from Monsieur later in the afternoon,” returned St. Aulaire, courteously, but with a disagreeable smile playing about his mouth.  “In the meantime, if Monsieur will but resign you for a time—­” He stopped and shrugged his shoulders slightly.  Calvert moved from his place beside Madame de St. Andre.