gh I had not told them of it, I do believe there was not a heart
among those kind people which did not know of that last moment in the
old convent and I could see it in tears dashed aside as they all rose
and sang the last strain of the American song, with the musicians in
the anteroom leading them.

And as they sang that most wonderful song, Gouverneur Faulkner laid
his arm across my shoulder, and the comfort of its strength gave to me
the courage to send back all the smiles that were sent to me, as that
funny Mr. Buzz Clendenning said while they seated themselves:

"Gee, but L'Aiglon is the real un-hyphenated brand of old Uncle Sam,
Jr."

"Thank God that firebrand isn't a girl," I heard my Uncle, the General
Robert, say to most lovely Mademoiselle Susan, in a corn-colored gown
of fine line, who sat at his side.

"I'm so grateful to you, General, that he is a boy," I heard her say
in the deepest respect and regard for my Uncle, the General Robert.

"I don't doubt at all, Madam, that you will succeed in making me wish
that he had been born a girl or not at all," was the kind reply that
he made to her nicely spoken gratitude as we laughed into each other's
eyes across the table.

"I hope so," was the answer with which Mademoiselle Sue comforted him.

"And now what have you to say to me, boy, the oldest friend you've got
in America, who hasn't seen you for days--that have been too long,"
said that Madam Whitworth, who was seated at my side, and as she spoke
she turned one lovely bare shoulder in the direction of my Uncle, the
General Robert, and the beautiful Mademoiselle Sue and also Buzz, as
if to shut them away from her and me in a little space of world just
for two people.

"I can say with truth, Madam, that your loveliness to-night is but the
flowering of my suspicions of it that morning upon the railroad
train," I answered her in words that were a very nice translation of
what that fine young Cossack had once said to me at the Chateau de
Grez of my own flowering into rose chiffon after an afternoon's
hunting with him in corduroys. And in truth I spoke no falsehood to
that Madam Whitworth, for she was of a very great beauty of body, very
much of which was in view from a scantiness of bodice that I had never
seen excelled in any ballroom in France.

"I knew you for a poet from that adorable black mop which I see you
have very nicely plastered in an exact imitation of Buzz Clendenning's
red one," she answere