"Thirteen or fourteen years ago; yet the memories of my home are fresh and fragrant as though I quitted it only yesterday."
"Then happy indeed must have been that hearthstone, whose rose-coloured reminiscences linger so tenderly around your heart, and survive the attrition of a long residence in Paris. Your repertoire of charming memories tempts me almost to the verge of covetousness. In what portion of the United States did you reside?"
"My boyhood was spent in one of the middle States, where my estate is located, but my collegiate life removed me to the north, whence I came immediately abroad. My residence in Europe confirms the belief that crossed the Atlantic with me, that in beauty, grace, and all the nameless charms that constitute the perfect, peerless, fascinating woman, my own country I pre-eminently bears the palm. Broad as is her domain, and noble her civil institutions, the crowning glory of America dwells in her lovely and gifted women."
He had never looked handsomer than at that moment, as, slightly bending his head in homage, his dangerously beautiful eyes rested with an unmistakable expression upon the faultless features before him; and watching him, a cold smile broke up the icy outline of his companion's delicate lips:
"American beauty might question the sincerity of a champion whose worship is offered only at foreign shrines, and the precious oblation of whose heart is laid on distant and strange altars."
"Ah, Madame,—neither at foreign shrines nor strange altars, but ever unwaveringly at the feet of my divine countrywomen. Is it needful that I recross the ocean to bow before the reigning muse? Is it not conceded that the brightest, loveliest planet in Parisian skies, brought all her splendour from my western home?"
"How you barb with keen regret the mortifying reflection that I, alas! cannot as an American lay claim to a moiety of your chivalric allegiance! Ill-fated Odille Orme!"
The stinging sarcasm in the liquid voice perplexed him, and the strange lambent light that seemed now and then to ray out of the brilliant eyes that had never wandered from his, sent an uncomfortable thrill over him.
"Surely the world cannot have erred in according to my own country the honour of your nationality?"
"I was born upon a French ship, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean."