laide, a man so pure-minded as Schinner could not but
believe in her perfect innocence, and ascribe the incoherence of the
furniture to honorable causes.

"My dear," said the old lady to the young one, "I am cold; make a little
fire, and give me my shawl."

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