During this conversation Annie was in a reverie which it in no way touched. She had the faculty of shutting her ears to sounds she did not wish to take into her consciousness, and the French Revolution did not exist for her. She was thinking all the time of her Cousin George, and of the singular abruptness with which his love life had been cut short; and it was this train of thought which led her--when the murmur of voices ceased for a moment--to say impulsively: "Uncle, it is my desire to go to Philadelphia," The Earl looked at her with incredulity. "What nonsense, Annie!" he exclaimed. "The thing is impossible." "Why impossible?" "For you, I mean. You would be very ill before the journey was half-finished. The roads, as George will tell you, are nearly impassable; and the weather after this fog may be intensely cold. For you a journey to Philadelphia would be an arduous undertaking, and one without any reasonable motive." "Oh, indeed! Do you call George Washington an unreasonable motive? I wish to see him. Imagine me within one hundred miles of this supreme hero, and turning back to England without kissing his hand. I should be laughed at--I should deserve to be laughed at." "Yes, if the journey were an easier one." "To be sure, the roads and the cold will be trials; but then my uncle, you can give them to me, as God gives trials to His Beloved. He breaks them up into small portions, and puts a night's sleep between the portions. Can you not also do this?" "You little Methodist!" answered the Earl, with a tender gleam in his eyes. "I see that I shall have to give you your own way. Will you go with us, George?" "It will be a relief. New York is in the dumps. Little Burr having beaten the Schuyler faction, thinks himself omnipotent; and this quarrel between Mr. Jay and Governor Clinton keeps every one else on the edge of ill-humour. All the dancing part of the town are gone to Philadelphia; I have scarcely a partner left; and there is no conversation now in New York that is not political. Burr, Schuyler, Jay, Clinton! even the clergy have gone horse and foot into these disputes." "Burr has a kind of cleverness; one must admit that." "He is under the curse of knowing everything." "Nevertheless his opinions will not alter the axis of the earth. It is however a dangerous thing to live in a community where politics are the staple of talk, quarrels spring full armed from a word in such an atmosphere." "I have accommodated my politics, sir, to my own satisfaction; and I make shift to answer people according to their idols. I vow, I am so weary of the words 'honour and honesty' that they beat a tattoo on my brain."