Adelaide went into a room next the drawing-room, where she no

doubt slept, and returned bringing her mother a cashmere shawl,
which when new must have been very costly; the pattern was

Indian; but it was old, faded and full of darns, and matched the
furniture. Madame Leseigneur wrapped herself in it very

artistically, and with the readiness of an old woman who wishes
to make her words seem truth. The young girl ran lightly off to

the lumber-room and reappeared with a bundle of small wood, which
she gallantly threw on the fire to revive it.

It would be rather difficult to reproduce the conversation which
followed among these three persons. Hippolyte, guided by the tact

which is almost always the outcome of misfortune suffered in
early youth, dared not allow himself to make the least remark as

to his neighbors' situation, as he saw all about him the signs of
ill-disguised poverty. The simplest question would have been an

indiscretion, and could only be ventured on by old friendship.
The painter was nevertheless absorbed in the thought of this

concealed penury, it pained his generous soul; but knowing how
offensive every kind of pity may be, even the friendliest, the

disparity between his thoughts and his words made him feel
uncomfortable.

The two ladies at first talked of painting, for women easily
guess the secret embarrassment of a first call; they themselves

feel it perhaps, and the nature of their mind supplies them with
a thousand devices to put an end to it. By questioning the young

man as to the material exercise of his art, and as to his
studies, Adelaide and her mother emboldened him to talk. The

indefinable nothings of their chat, animated by kind feeling,
naturally led Hippolyte to flash forth remarks or reflections

which showed the character of his habits and of his mind. Trouble
had prematurely faded the old lady's face, formerly handsome, no

doubt; nothing was left but the more prominent features, the
outline, in a word, the skeleton of a countenance of which the

whole effect indicated great shrewdness with much grace in the
play of the eyes, in which could be discerned the expression

peculiar to women of the old Court; an expression that cannot be
defined in words. Those fine and mobile features might quite as

well indicate bad feelings, and suggest astuteness and womanly
artifice carried to a high pitch of wickedness, as reveal the

refined delicacy of a beautiful soul.
Indeed, the face of a woman has this element of mystery to puzzle

the ordinary observer, that the difference between frankness and
duplicity, the genius for intrigue and the genius of the heart,

is there inscrutable. A man gifted with the penetrating eye can
read the intangible shade of difference produced by a more or

less curved line, a more or less deep dimple, a more or less
prominent feature. The appreciation of these indications lies

entirely in the domain of intuition; this alone can lead to the
discovery of what everyone is interested in concealing. The old

lady's face was like the room she inhabited; it seemed as
difficult to detect whether this squalor covered vice or the

highest virtue, as to decide whether Adelaide's mother was an old
coquette accustomed to weigh, to calculate, to sell everything,

or a loving woman, full of noble feeling and amiable qualities.
But at Schinner's age the first impulse of the heart is to

believe in goodness. And indeed, as he studied Adelaide's noble
and almost haughty brow, as he looked into her eyes full of soul

and thought, he breathed, so to speak, the sweet and modest
fragrance of virtue. In the course of the conversation he seized

an opportunity of discussing portraits in general, to give
himself a pretext for examining the frightful pastel, of which

the color had flown, and the chalk in many places fallen away.
"You are attached to that picture for the sake of the likeness,

no doubt, mesdames, for the drawing is dreadful?" he said,
looking at Adelaide.

"It was done at Calcutta, in great haste," replied the mother in
an agitated voice.

She gazed at the formless sketch with the deep absorption which
memories of happiness produce when they are roused and fall on

the heart like a beneficent dew to whose refreshing touch we love
to yield ourselves up; but in the expression of the old lady's

face there were traces too of perennial regret. At least, it was
thus that the painter chose to interpret her attitude and

countenance, and he presently sat down again by her side.
"Madame," he said, "in a very short time the colors of that

pastel will have disappeared. The portrait will only survive in
your memory. Where you will still see the face that is dear to

you, others will see nothing at all. Will you allow me to
reproduce the likeness on canvas? It will be more permanently

recorded then than on that sheet of paper. Grant me, I beg, as a
neighborly favor, the pleasure of doing you this service. There

are times when an artist is glad of a respite from his greater
undertakings by doing work of less lofty pretensions, so it will

be a recreation for me to paint that head."
The old lady flushed as she heard the painter's words, and

Adelaide shot one of those glances of deep feeling which seem to
flash from the soul. Hippolyte wanted to feel some tie linking

him with his two neighbors, to conquer a right to mingle in their
life. His offer, appealing as it did to the liveliest affections

of the heart, was the only one he could possibly make; it
gratified his pride as an artist, and could not hurt the feelings

of the ladies. Madame Leseigneur accepted, without eagerness or
reluctance, but with the self-possession of a noble soul, fully

aware of the character of bonds formed by such an obligation,
while, at the same time, they are its highest glory as a proof of

esteem.
"I fancy," said the painter, "that the uniform is that of a naval

officer."
Yes," she said, "that of a captain in command of a vessel.

Monsieur de Rouville--my husband--died at Batavia in consequence
of a wound received in a fight with an English ship they fell in

with off the Asiatic coast. He commanded a frigate of fifty-six
guns and the Revenge carried ninety-six. The struggle was very

unequal, but he defended his ship so bravely that he held out
till nightfall and got away. When I came back to France Bonaparte

was not yet in power, and I was refused a pension. When I applied
again for it, quite lately, I was sternly informed that if the

Baron de Rouville had emigrated I should not have lost him; that
by this time he would have been a rear-admiral; finally, his

Excellency quoted I know not what degree of forfeiture. I took
this step, to which I was urged by my friends, only for the sake

of my poor Adelaide. I have always hated the idea of holding out
my hand as a beggar in the name of a grief which deprives a woman

of voice and strength. I do not like this money valuation for
blood irreparably spilt----"

"Dear mother, this subject always does you harm."
In response to this remark from Adelaide, the Baronne Leseigneur

bowed, and was silent.
"Monsieur," said the young girl to Hippolyte, "I had supposed

that a painter's work was generally fairly quiet?"
At this question Schinner colored, remembering the noise he had

made. Adelaide said no more, and spared him a falsehood by rising
at the sound of a carriage stopping at the door. She went into

her own room, and returned carrying a pair of tall gilt
candlesticks with partly burnt wax candles, which she quickly

lighted, and without waiting for the bell to ring, she opened the
door of the outer room, where she set the lamp down. The sound of

a kiss given and received found an echo in Hippolyte's heart. The
young man's impatience to see the man who treated Adelaide with

so much familiarity was not immediately gratified; the newcomers
had a conversation, which he thought very long, in an undertone,

with the young girl.
At last Mademoiselle de Rouville returned, followed by two men,

whose costume, countenance, and appearance are a long story.
The first, a man of about sixty, wore one of the coats invented,

I believe, for Louis XVIII., then on the throne, in which the
most difficult problem of the sartorial art had been solved by a

tailor who ought to be immortal. That artist certainly understood
the art of compromise, which was the moving genius of that period

of shifting politics. Is it not a rare merit to be able to take