nds in the bright aureole of her hair, she greeted
the numerous acquaintances who entered her box at the theatre,
with the affability and freedom of a perfect society lady. She
was even celebrated in that great city for the qualities which
constitute so-called society personages, and which, in those who
knew her past, roused a certain wonder. It was known to all that
that past was very modest. Darvid in his youth, which was far
less brilliant than his present, married a poor orphan, a
teacher. But Malvina Darvid was of those women who need only a
golden setting to sparkle like diamonds. She shone in the great
world with a charm, an elegance, a power of speech which were the
same as if she had been its own daughter. She was radiant with
satisfaction, with serenity, often even with joyous animation,
and only now and then did a slight wrinkle, with a barely
discernible line furrowing her Grecian forehead, sink itself and
cast on her face an expression of weariness, or the corners of
her lips, still red and shapely, drop downward and make that
oval, white, delicate face ten years older than it seemed to be
usually. But those were only short and rare moments, after which
Malvina Darvid was again entirely flooded with the brilliancy of
her beautiful eyes, her splendid toilet, the sounds of her
metallic voice, warm and full of sweetness. She seemed barely a
few years older than her elder daughter. Sometimes guests left
her box with the words:

"She is more beautiful than her daughter."

And offener still: "She is more charming and sympathetic than her
daughter."

Still nature had been no stepmother to Irene Darvid; but life,
though so short thus far, had stamped on her exterior a mark
which, while it astonished and discouraged, repelled.

If the younger sister seemed a living portrait of her mother, the
elder recalled her father, with her high forehead, thin lips,
and--a thing wonderful at such a tender age--the mark of irony
drawn over them. Her hair, too, like her father's, changed with
fiery gleams of gold and bronze, while the pale complexion of her
face, which was too long, was lighted by the frequent sharp
glitter of her eyes, which, as those of her father, were not
large, and had gray pupils with a cold glance, penetrating and
reasoning. Her shapely form was somewhat too slender; her posture
and movements too stiff and ceremonious. She passed in society
for a haughty, cold, unapproachable, original, and even ecce