ly wise to be humble, to know that it is almost
profanation if, as man, he presumes to enter the penetralia of a woman's
innermost heart, and repeat, as a man would repeat, all the vibrations
of sound which the heart of a woman sends forth undistinguishable even
to her own ear.

I know Isaura as intimately as if I had rocked her in her cradle, played
with her in her childhood, educated and trained her in her youth; and
yet I can no more tell you faithfully what passed in her mind during
the forty-eight hours that intervened between her conversation with that
American lady and her reappearance in some commonplace drawing-room,
than I can tell you what the Man in the Moon might feel if the sun that
his world reflected were blotted out of creation.

I can only say that when she reappeared in that commonplace drawing-room
world, there was a change in her face not very perceptible to the
ordinary observer. If anything, to his eye she was handsomer--the eye
was brighter--the complexion (always lustrous, though somewhat pale,
the limpid paleness that suits so well with dark hair) was yet more
lustrous,--it was flushed into delicate rose hues--hues that still
better suit with dark hair. What, then, was the change, and change not
for the better? The lips, once so pensively sweet, had grown hard; on
the brow that had seemed to laugh when the lips did, there was no longer
sympathy between brow and lip; there was scarcely seen a fine threadlike
line that in a few years would be a furrow on the space between the
eyes; the voice was not so tenderly soft; the step was haughtier. What
all such change denoted it is for a woman to decide-I can only guess.
In the mean while, Mademoiselle Cicogna had sent her servant daily to
inquire after M. Rameau. That, I think, she would have done under any
circumstances. Meanwhile, too, she had called on Madame Savarin--made it
up with her--sealed the reconciliation by a cold kiss. That, too, under
any circumstances, I think she would have done--under some circumstances
the kiss might have been less cold.

There was one thing unwonted in her habits. I mention it, though it is
only a woman who can say if it means anything worth noticing.

For six days she had left a letter from Madame de Grantmesnil
unanswered. With Madame de Grantmesnil was connected the whole of her
innermost life--from the day when the lonely desolate child had seen,
beyond the dusty thoroughfares of life, gleams of the faery lan