his tortured heart; but what did he think of her now? She had reached that queenly standard to which women only attain after marriage; and while she had lost none of her early charms, her frankness, her simplicity, her radiant smile, her deep truthful eyes, she had added to them that gentle dignity, that calm, assured repose of manner, which completes the graces of mature womanhood, and adorns the wedded wife as fitly as her purple robe becomes a queen.
She could look him in the face quietly and steadily enough; but while his very heart thrilled at her voice, his eyes fell, as though dazzled, beneath her beauty.
"You forget, monsieur," said she, with an affectionate glance at her husband, "I am an Englishwoman now; and we have deeper interests here even than the change of fashions and the revolutions in the kingdom of dress. Besides, mamma keeps me informed on all such subjects, as well as those of more importance; but she is in Touraine now, and I am quite in the dark as regards everything at Paris; above all, the political state of the Court. You see we are no longer Musketeers."
She smiled playfully at George, in allusion to the sentiment he had lately broached, and looked, Florian thought, lovelier than ever.
The excitement of conversation had brought a colour to her cheek. Now, when she ceased, it faded away, leaving her perhaps none the less beautiful, that she was a little pale and seemed tired. He observed the change of course. Not an inflection of her voice, not a quiver of an eyelash, not one of those silken hairs out of place on her soft forehead, could have escaped his notice. "Was she unhappy?" he thought; "was she, too, dissatisfied with her lot? Had she failed to reach that resting-place of the heart which is sought for eagerly by so many, and found but by so few?" It pained him; yes, he was glad to feel that it pained him to think this possible. Yet would he have been better pleased to learn that her languor of manner, her pale weariness of brow, were only the effects of her morning's disappointment, when she waited in vain for the company of her husband?
But such an under-current of reflection in no way affected the tide of his conversation; nor had he forgotten the
