er into an immense
salon, where a dozen or more women were grouped about the fireplace. The
men of the party remained with the duke on the terrace, except Canalis,
who respectfully made his way to the superb Eleonore. The Duchesse de
Chaulieu, seated at an embroidery-frame, was showing Mademoiselle de
Verneuil how to shade a flower.

If Modeste had run a needle through her finger when handling a
pin-cushion she could not have felt a sharper prick than she received
from the cold and haughty and contemptuous stare with which Madame de
Chaulieu favored her. For an instant she saw nothing but that one woman,
and she saw through her. To understand the depths of cruelty to which
these charming creatures, whom our passions deify, can go, we must see
women with each other. Modeste would have disarmed almost any other than
Eleonore by the perfectly stupid and involuntary admiration which
her face betrayed. Had she not known the duchess's age she would have
thought her a woman of thirty-six; but other and greater astonishments
awaited her.

The poet had run plump against a great lady's anger. Such anger is the
worst of sphinxes; the face is radiant, all the rest menacing. Kings
themselves cannot make the exquisite politeness of a mistress's cold
anger capitulate when she guards it with steel armor. Canalis tried to
cling to the steel, but his fingers slipped on the polished surface,
like his words on the heart; and the gracious face, the gracious words,
the gracious bearing of the duchess hid the steel of her wrath, now
fallen to twenty-five below zero, from all observers. The appearance
of Modeste in her sublime beauty, and dressed as well as Diane de
Maufrigneuse herself, had fired the train of gunpowder which reflection
had been laying in Eleonore's mind.

All the women had gone to the windows to see the new wonder get out of
the royal carriage, attended by her three suitors.

"Do not let us seem so curious," Madame de Chaulieu had said, cut to the
heart by Diane's exclamation,--"She is divine! where in the world
does she come from?"--and with that the bevy flew back to their seats,
resuming their composure, though Eleonore's heart was full of hungry
vipers all clamorous for a meal.

Mademoiselle d'Herouville said in a low voice and with much meaning
to the Duchesse de Verneuil, "Eleonore receives her Melchior very
ungraciously."

"The Duchesse de Maufrigneuse thinks there is a coolness between them,"
said Laure de Ver