ward vision of pure-souled believing woman.

And Gustave himself, as he passes through the slow stages of
convalescence, seems so gratefully to ascribe to her every step in his
progress--seems so gently softened in character--seems so refined from
the old affectations, so ennobled above the old cynicism--and, above
all, so needing her presence, so sunless without it, that--well, need I
finish the sentence?--the reader will complete what I leave unsaid.

Enough, that one day Isaura returned home from a visit at Madame
Rameau's with the knowledge that her hand was pledged--her future life
disposed of; and that, escaping from the Venosta, whom she so fondly,
and in her hunger for a mother's love, called Madre, the girl shut
herself up in her own room with locked doors.

Ah, poor child! ah, sweet-voiced Isaura! whose delicate image I feel
myself too rude and too hard to transfer to this page in the purity of
its outlines, and the blended softnesses of its hues--thou who,
when saying things serious in the words men use, saidst them with a
seriousness so charming, and with looks so feminine--thou, of whom no
man I ever knew was quite worthy--ah, poor, simple, miserable girl, as I
see thee now in the solitude of that white-curtained virginal room; hast
thou, then, merged at last thy peculiar star into the cluster of all
these commonplace girls whose lips have said "Ay," when their hearts
said "No"?--thou, O brilliant Isaura! thou, O motherless child!

She had sunk into her chair--her own favourite chair, the covering of it
had been embroidered by Madame de Grantmesnil, and bestowed on her as a
birthday present last year--the year in which she had first learned what
it is to love--the year in which she had first learned what it is to
strive for fame. And somehow uniting, as many young people do, love and
fame in dreams of the future, that silken seat had been to her as the
Tripod of Delphi was to the Pythian: she had taken to it, as it were
intuitively, in all those hours, whether of joy or sorrow, when youth
seeks to prophesy, and does but dream.

There she sat now, in a sort of stupor--a sort of dreary
bewilderment--the illusion of the Pythian gone--desire of dream and of
prophecy alike extinct--pressing her hands together, and muttering to
herself, "What has happened?--what have I done?"

Three hours later you would not have recognised the same face that you
see now. For then the bravery, the honour, the loyalty of the