Isaura became a celebrity at Paris.

Perhaps it was a wonder that her head was not turned by the adulation
that surrounded her. But I believe, be it said with diffidence, that
a woman of mind so superior that the mind never pretends to efface the
heart, is less intoxicated with flattery than a man equally exposed to
it.

It is the strength of her heart that keeps her head sober. Isaura had
never yet overcome her first romance of love; as yet, amid all her
triumphs, there was not a day in which her thoughts did not wistfully,
mournfully, fly back to those blessed moments in which she felt her
cheek colour before a look, her heart beat at the sound of a footfall.
Perhaps if there had been the customary finis to this young romance--the
lover's deliberate renunciation, his formal farewell--the girl's
pride would ere this have conquered her affection,--possibly--who
knows?--replaced it.

But, reader, be you male or female, have you ever known this sore
trial of affection and pride, that from some cause or other, to you
mysterious, the dear intercourse to which you had accustomed the secret
life of your life, abruptly ceases; you know that a something has
come between you and the beloved which you cannot distinguish, cannot
measure, cannot guess, and therefore cannot surmount; and you say to
yourself at the dead of solitary night, "Oh for an explanation! Oh for
one meeting more! All might be so easily set right; or if not, I should
know the worst, and knowing it, could conquer!"

This trial was Isaura's. There had been no explanation, no last farewell
between her and Graham. She divined--no woman lightly makes a mistake
there--that he loved her! She knew that this dread something had
intervened between her and him when he took leave of her before others
so many months ago; that this dread something still continued--what was
it? She was certain that it would vanish, could they but once meet again
and not before others. Oh for such a meeting!

She could not herself destroy hope. She could not marry another. She
would have no heart to give to another while he was free, while in doubt
if his heart was still her own. And thus her pride did not help her to
conquer her affection.

Of Graham Vane she heard occasionally. He had ceased to correspond with
Savarin; but among those who most frequented her salon were the Morleys.
Americans so well educated and so well placed as the Morleys knew
something about every Englishman of t