rect form on the surface. We have even drunk from the same
cup of wine, because she preferred me hers yester-night, saying, 'To
our gallant recruit Monsieur Inverey, and to his gallant nation, les
Ecossais.' Ah, the laughing witch! You should have seen the languor
in her eyes, the blushing red of her lips, the delicate contour of her
arm, as she raised her glass to me and then bade me empty it.

"'Ah,' said I, bowing and taking it from her hand, against whose baby
pinkness the champagne sparkled; 'ah, it is good to see, chere Madame,
that you know the ceremony of the Loving Cup, and how, elegantly, to
express it.' My phrase of the Loving Cup took her, I saw, it and my
significance in using it, and her dark eyes, her pouting lips, and the
turn of her lovely head, all had a new meaning as, saying, 'To our Lady
Venus, in New France,' I emptied the glass and set it on the table
beside her.

"We fell a-talking, Madame Angelique and I, and she was good enough to
praise my French, and I said that, alas! it was not sufficient to do
justice to her charms. She flushed with pleasure, and said archly that
she wished her husband, Monsieur Pean, or even her very good friend the
Intendant, would pay her like compliments. 'But,' she added, 'you
Scotsmen are so gallant and so truthful,' and in her sweet French the
token rang true. With it she raised her eyebrows, expecting me to
confirm her raillery, which I did, for I said, 'Madame, truth is the
only gallantry that tells twice, and so I am content to employ it, for
I hope we are to be friends.'

"It was a bold measure to take, but Madame Angelique, I judged, with
her on-coming air, was precisely the woman who would respond to bold
measures. She is none of your woo-me-slowly ladies, her bosom, as it
rose and fell in her French laces, being eloquent of that. She is a
singularly fine animal to whom Providence has, by an unusual
generosity, given a soul, though mostly, maybe, it hides in the silken
dalliance which is the note of Angelique.

"You will perceive, my old friend and, I hope, old enemy, that I
present to you a whole bouquet of charms: beauty of form, the radiance
of a personality, and brains with an edge to flatter or flout. Very
rarely does Providence dower so many graces to one woman, but they are
all in Madame Angelique. Moreover, she has the subtlest of sex
strategy, for in greeting me she made a stumble with her lace petticoat
so that I might catch the dainti