would have added, also, that the Duchesse de Chevreuse was not more dangerous.
That her form and her face were perfect, was not half nor a tithe of her resistless charm; it lay in still more than these, in every glance of her eyes, blue-black like the gazelle's, in every slight smile that crossed her proud lips, in all the sunlit lustre on her hair, in all the attitudes of her southern grace, in every movement, accent, and gesture of one who knew to its uttermost the spells of her power, and was used to have that power courted, flattered, and obeyed. Her loveliness was very great; but, great as it was, it was comparatively forgotten beside so much that was of still rarer fascination; the patrician ease, the silver wit, the languor and the laughter, the dignity and the nonchalance, the brilliance and the eloquence which turn by turn gave their changing sorcery to her. The innocence and fawn-like shyness of a young girl in her earnest spring may be charming in a pastoral, but in real life they are but awkward and tame beside the exquisite witchery, the polished insouciance, the careless disdain, the cultured fascination of a woman of the world. And these were hers in their utmost perfection; a woman of the world she was in the utmost meaning of the words, and all of victory, of
