“There is my favorite quadrille—­La la-la-la-la-la-a-la,” softly humming and nodding her head, an action not common among the English.

“Pardon me, sir, your name is Mr.  ’Aviland, I believe,” interrupted a young man with a close-cut, very thick, very black beard, and the waxed ends of his moustache fiercely turned up.

I bowed.

“Our Sovereign Lady De Rheims requests the pleasure of your conversation.”

On turning to Mlle. Sylphe to make my excuses, she smiled, saying with a regretful grimace:  “Obeissez.”

Mde.  De Rheims stood with Mde.  Fee, the aunt of Mile.  Sylphe, near the musicians, receiving and surveying her subjects,—­a woman of majestic presence.  Nodding dismissal to the fierce moustache, she acknowledged my deep bow with a slight but gracious inclination.

“Madame Fee, permit me to introduce Monsieur Chamilly Haviland, a D’Argentenaye of Dormilliere,—­and the last.  My child, your attractions have been too exclusively of the ‘West End.’  You have lived among the English; enter now into my society.”  Mde.  Fee smiled, and Mde. de Rheims taking a look at me continued:  “The stock is incomparable out of France.  Remember, my child, that your ancestors were grande noblesse,” haughtily raising her head.  A novel feeling of distinction was added to my swelling current of new pleasures.

A ruddy, simply-dressed, black-haired lady, but of natural and cultured manner, was now received by her with much cordiality, and I had an opportunity to survey the whole concourse and continue my observations.  Brought up as I had been for the last few years, I found my own people markedly foreign,—­not so much in any obtrusive respect as in that general atmosphere to which we often apply the term.

In the first place there was the language—­not patois as of habitants and barbers, nor the mode of the occasional caller at our house, whose pronunciation seemed an individual exception; but an entire assemblage holding intercourse in dainty Parisian, exquisite as the famous dialect of the Brahmans.  There was the graceful compliment, the antithetic description, the witty repartee.  One could say the poetical or sententious without being insulted by a stare.  Some of the ladies were beautiful, some were not, but they had for the most part a quite ideal degree of grace and many of them a kind of dignity not too often elsewhere found.  Every person laughed and was happy through the homely cotillion that was proceeding.  The feelings of the young seemed to issue and mingle in sympathy, with a freedom naturally delightful to my peculiar nature, and the triumphant strains of music excited my pulses.

Mde.  De Rheims touched my arm and pointed individuals by name.  “That strong young man is a d’Irumberry—­the pale one, a Le Ber—­that young girl’s mother is a Guay de Boisbriant.  Do not look at her partner, he is some canaille.”