As he made his way toward the shore, intending to remove his skates and find Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Morris, d’Azay and Beaufort came up and urged upon him to join them.  Both were good skaters, but the young American excelled them in a certain lightness and grace, and the three friends, as they circled about, trying a dozen difficult and showy manoeuvres on the ice, attracted much attention.  It was after half an hour of the vigorous exercise and as Mr. Calvert stopped for an instant to take breath and pay his respects to Madame de Flahaut, who had ventured upon the ice in a chair-sleigh surrounded by her admirers, that Monsieur de St. Aulaire again presented himself before him.

“I have come for my lesson, Monsieur,” he said to Calvert, bowing after his incomparably graceful fashion, which Calvert (who had never before wasted thought upon such things) suddenly found himself envying, and with the disagreeable smile still upon his lips.

“I am no skating-master, Monsieur,” returned the young man, quietly, and with as good grace as he was master of, “but I shall be happy to have a turn upon the ice with you,” and with that he moved off, leaving St. Aulaire to stay or follow as he chose.  He chose to follow and skated rapidly after Calvert with no very benevolent look on his handsome, dissipated face.  Although he was by far the best skater among the French gentlemen who thronged the ice, and although it was little short of a marvel that he should be so active at his age, he was scarcely a match for the younger man either in lightness or quickness of movement.  And although his splendid dress and jewels so overshadowed Mr. Calvert’s quiet appearance, he was conscious of being excelled before the crowd of spectators by the agility and sure young strength of the American.  Piqued and disgusted at the thought, the habitual half-mocking good-humor of his manner gave way to sullen, repressed irritation.  Knowing his world so well, he was sure of the interest and curiosity Calvert’s performance would arouse, and longed to convert his little triumph into a defeat.  Being accustomed to doing everything he undertook a little better, a little more gracefully, with a little more eclat than anyone else, he suddenly began to hate this young man who had beaten him at his own game and for whom he had felt an aversion from the first moment of seeing him.

He tried to bethink himself of some plan of lowering his enemy’s colors.  In his younger days he had been a notable athlete, excelling in vaulting and jumping, and suddenly an idea occurred to him which he thought would result in mortification to Mr. Calvert and success to himself.  So great was the interest in the skating of the two gentlemen that the greater part of the crowd had retired beyond a little ledge of roughened ice and snow which cut the improvised arena into two nearly equal parts from where they could conveniently see Monsieur de St. Aulaire and Mr. Calvert as they skated about.  This rift in the smoothness of the ice was some fifteen feet wide and extended far out from the shore, so that those wishing to pass beyond it had to skate out around its end and so get to the other side.  Monsieur de St. Aulaire came up close to it, and, as he did so, he suddenly called out to Calvert: