in his Street work.
Her offers were made with a curious mixture of sympathy and mockery.
Elsmere could not take her seriously. But neither could he refuse to
accept her money, if she chose to spend it on a library for Elgood
Street, or to consult with her about the choice of books. This whim of
hers created a certain friendly bond between them which was not present
before. And on Elsmere's side it was strengthened when, one evening, in
a corner of her inner drawing-room, Madame de Netteville suddenly, but
very quietly, told him the story of her life--her English youth, her
elderly French husband, the death of her only child, and her flight as a
young widow to England during the war of 1870. She told the story of the
child, as it seemed to Elsmere, with a deliberate avoidance of emotion,
nay, even with a certain hardness. But it touched him profoundly. And
everything else that she said, though she professed no great regret
for her husband, or for the break-up of her French life and though
everything was reticent and measured, deepened the impression of a real
forlornness behind all the outward brilliance and social importance. He
began to feel a deep and kindly pity for her, coupled with an earnest
wish that he could help her to make her life more adequate and
satisfying. And all this he showed in the look of his frank gray eyes,
in the cordial grasp of the hand with which, he said good-by to her.

Madame de Netteville's gaze followed him out of the room--the tall
boyish figure, the nobly carried head. The riddle of her flushed cheek
and sparkling eye was hard to read. But there were one or two persons
living who could have read it, and who could have warned you that the
_true_ story of Eugenie de Netteville's life was written, not in her
literary studies or her social triumphs, but in various recurrent
outbreaks of unbridled impulse--the secret, and in one or two cases
the shameful landmarks of her past. And, as persons of experience, they
could also have warned you that the cold intriguer, always mistress of
herself, only exists in fiction, and that a certain poisoned and fevered
interest in the religious leader, the young and pious priest, as such,
is common enough among the corrupter women of all societies.

Toward the end of May she asked Elsmere to dine '_en petit comite_, a
gentleman's dinner--except for my cousin, Lady Aubrey Willert'--to meet
an eminent Liberal Catholic, a friend of Montalembert's youth.

It w