mademoiselle had returned, the Marquise thought she loved her better than ever, and perhaps all the feelings and impulses of a heart not too well disciplined had of late been called into stronger play.
Madame de Montmirail threw herself back in her chair with an exclamation of pleasure, for the cool, soft breeze lifted the hair from her temples, and stirred the delicate lace edging on her bosom. "It is delightful, my child!" she said, "after the heat of to-day, which was suffocating. And we have nothing for to-night, I thank the saints with my whole heart! Absolutely nothing! Neither ball, nor concert, nor opera (for I could not sit out another of Cavalli's), nor even a horrid reception at the Luxembourg. This is what I call veritable repose."
Like all people with a tinge of southern blood, the Marquise cried out at the slightest increase of temperature. Like all fashionable ladies, she professed to consider those gaieties without which she could not live, duty, but martyrdom.
Mademoiselle, however, loved a ball dearly, and was not ashamed to say so. She entered such gatherings, indeed, with something of the nervousness felt by a recruit in his first engagement. The prospect of triumph was enhanced by the chance of danger; but the sense of personal apprehension forcibly overcome, which is, perhaps, the true definition of courage, added elasticity to her spirits, keenness to her intellect, and even charms to her person. Beauty, moving gracefully amongst admiring glances, under a warm light in a cloud of muslin, carries, perhaps, as high a heart beneath her bodice as beats behind the steel cuirass of Valour, riding his mailed war-horse in triumph through the shock of opposing squadrons.
"And I like going out so much, mamma," said the girl, sitting on a footstool by her chair, and leaning both elbows on her mother's lap. "With you I mean; that must, of course, be understood. Alone in a ball-room without the petticoats of Madame la Marquise, behind which to run when the wolf comes, I should be so frightened, I do believe I should begin to cry! Seriously, mamma, I should not like it at all. Tell me, dear mother, how did you manage at first, when you entered a society by yourself?"
