t exactly comme il faut. More
specifically, she was guilty of contours fortement prononces,--corsage de
paysanne,--quelque chose de sauvage, etc., etc. This girl prided herself
on her figure.

Miss Bella Pool, (La Belle Poule as the demi-Parisian girl had christened
her,) the beauty of the school, did not think so much of Myrtle's face,
but considered her figure as better than the De Lacy girl's.

The two sets, first and second, fought over her as the Greeks and Trojans
over a dead hero, or the Yale College societies over a live freshman.
She was nobody by her connections, it is true, so far as they could find
out, but then, on the other hand, she had the walk of a queen, and she
looked as if a few stylish dresses and a season or two would make her a
belle of the first water. She had that air of indifference to their
little looks and whispered comments which is surest to disarm all the
critics of a small tattling community. On the other hand, she came to
this school to learn, and not to play; and the modest and more plainly
dressed girls, whose fathers did not sell by the cargo, or keep
victualling establishments for some hundreds of people, considered her as
rather in sympathy with them than with the daughters of the
rough-and-tumble millionnaires who were grappling and rolling over each
other in the golden dust of the great city markets.

She did not mean to belong exclusively to either of their sets. She came
with that sense of manifold deficiencies, and eager ambition to supply
them, which carries any learner upward, as if on wings, over the heads of
the mechanical plodders and the indifferent routinists. She learned,
therefore, in a way to surprise the experienced instructors. Her
somewhat rude sketching soon began to show something of the artist's
touch. Her voice, which had only been taught to warble the simplest
melodies, after a little training began to show its force and sweetness
and flexibility in the airs that enchant drawing-room audiences. She
caught with great readiness the manner of the easiest girls,
unconsciously, for she inherited old social instincts which became nature
with the briefest exercise. Not much license of dress was allowed in the
educational establishment of Madam Delacoste, but every girl had an
opportunity to show her taste within the conventional limits prescribed.
And Myrtle soon began to challenge remark by a certain air she contrived
to give her dresses, and the skill wi