As I turned from her, a voice in my ear said imperiously:
"Well, sir, and have you no word for your old friend, Fanny Cadwalader?"
I turned quickly; it was the beautiful lady with the dark curls.
"Miss Fanny!" I cried in joyous recognition, and bent low over her extended hand.
I had been but a young boy when Frances Cadwalader married Mr. Erskine and went to London to live; but we had been great friends as children, and I did not understand how I had failed to recognize her. She bade me stand beside her and she would point out all the distinguished guests, and I was glad indeed of her protection. In reply to my eager question as to how she came to be in Washington, she told me that her husband had been appointed minister from Great Britain in Mr. Merry's place, and they were but newly arrived.
"But where have you been living, sir," she asked, with mock severity, "that you know nothing of what has been going on in the great world? Or are we personages of so small importance that our movements are not chronicled in America?"
I had to explain that I had been in the backwoods for months, and for the last two months in the foreign colony of Louisiana, in the village of St. Louis, where little of the doings of the outside world penetrated.
She forgave me my ignorance, and immediately pointed out to me her husband, a fine-looking Englishman, talking to the most gorgeously arrayed creature I had ever beheld: satin, laces, velvets, jewels, gold lace, and powder made up a dazzling ensemble.
"That," said she, "is the Marquis de Casa Yrujo, and the lady with him is his wife, Sally McKean. He is magnificent, is he not? I would not quite like it if I were the marchioness, for people look at him instead of her, and she is quite beautiful enough to be looked at herself."
"Ah, why begrudge the marquis his meed of admiration, if he likes it?" I said. "And since he likes it, let us be grateful, for his sake, that it is not Mistress Erskine who is the marchioness, for who can see the glitter of the stars when the lovely moon is in the sky?"