My father led me at once to Mme. Le Vert, then the reigning queen of every gathering at which she appeared, and in her safe hands every fear vanished. I had heard my elders speak frequently of her beauty, and somehow had imagined her tall. She was less so than I had pictured, but so winning and cordial to me, a timid child, that I at once capitulated before the charm she cast over everyone who came into conversation with her. I thought her face the sweetest I had ever seen. She had a grace and frankness which made everyone with whom she talked feel that he or she alone commanded her attention. I do not recall her making a single _bon mot_, but she was vivacious and smiling. Her charm, it seemed to me, lay in her lovely manners and person and her permeating intellectuality. I remember Mme. Le Vert’s appearance on that occasion distinctly, though to describe it now seems garish. To see her then was bewildering, and all her colour was harmony. She wore a gown of golden satin, and on her hair a wreath of coral flowers, which her morocco shoes matched in hue. In the dance she moved like a bird on the wing. I can see her now in her shining robe, as she swayed and glided, holding the shimmering gown aside as she floated through the “ladies’ chain.” The first dance of my life was a quadrille, _vis-à-vis_ with this renowned beauty, who took me under her protection and encouraged me from time to time. “Don’t be afraid, my dear,” she would sweetly say, “Do just as I do,” and I glided after my wonderful instructress like one enchanted, with never a mishap. Mme. Le Vert, who in years to come became internationally celebrated, was a kinswoman of Clement Claiborne Clay, and in after times, when I became his wife, I often met her, but throughout my long life I have remembered that first meeting in Mobile, and her charm and grace have remained a prized picture in my memory. It was of this exquisite belle that Washington Irving remarked: “But one such woman is born in the course of an empire.” It was to my Uncle Tom that I owed the one love sorrow of my life. It was an affair of the greatest intensity while it endured, and was attended by the utmost anguish for some twelve or fourteen hours. During that space of time I endured all the hopes and fears, the yearnings and despairs to which the human heart is victim. I was nearing the age of fifteen when my uncle one evening bade me put on my prettiest frock and accompany him to the home of a friend, where a dance was to be given. I was dressed with all the alacrity my old mammy was capable of summoning, and was soon ensconced in the carriage and on my way to the hospitable scene. En route we stopped at the hotel, where my uncle alighted, reappearing in a moment with a very handsome young man, who entered the carriage with him and drove with us to the house, where he, too, was to be a guest.