After we had eaten supper Doctor Chantry and I sat with his sister where we could see the dancing, on a landing of the stairway.  De Chaumont’s generous house was divided across the middle by a wide hall that made an excellent ball-room.  The sides were paneled, like the walls of the room in which I first came to my senses.  Candles in sconces were reflected by the polished, dark floor.  A platform for his fiddlers had been built at one end.  Festoons of green were carried from a cluster of lights in the center of the ceiling, to the corners, making a bower or canopy under which the dancers moved.

It is strange to think that not one stone remains upon another and scarcely a trace is left of this manor.  When De Chaumont determined to remove to his seat at Le Rayville, in what was then called Castorland, he had his first hold pulled down.

Miss Chantry was a blunt woman.  Her consideration for me rested on my being her brother’s pupil.  She spoke more readily than he did.  From our cove we looked over the railing at an active world.

“Madame Eagle is a picture,” remarked Miss Chantry. “——­ Eagle!  What a name for civilized people to give a christened child!  But these French are as likely as not to call their boys Anne or Marie, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they called their girls Cat or Dog.  Eagle or Crow, she is the handsomest woman on the floor.”

“Except Mademoiselle Annabel,” the doctor ventured to amend.

“That Annabel de Chaumont,” his sister vigorously declared, “has neither conscience nor gratitude.  But none of the French have.  They will take your best and throw you away with a laugh.”

My master and I watched the brilliant figures swimming in the glow of wax candles.  Face after face could be singled out as beautiful, and the scant dresses revealed taper forms.  Madame de Ferrier’s garments may have been white or blue or yellow; I remember only her satin arms and neck, the rosy color of her face, and the powder on her hair making it white as down.  Where this assembly was collected from I did not know, but it acted on the spirits and went like volatile essence to the brain.

“Pheugh!” exclaimed Miss Chantry, “how the French smell!”

I asked her why, if she detested them so, she lived in a French family, and she replied that Count de Chaumont was an exception, being almost English in his tastes.  He had lived out of France since his father came over with La Fayette to help the rebellious Americans.

I did not know who the rebellious Americans were, but inferred that they were people of whom Miss Chantry thought almost as little as she did of the French.

Croghan looked quite a boy among so many experienced gallants, but well appointed in his dress and stepping through the figures featly.  He was, Miss Chantry said, a student of William and Mary College.

“This company of gentry will be widely scattered when it disperses home,” she told us.  “There is at least one man from over-seas.”