taking my hand and saying something in which 'charmee' was the
most intelligible word. While she spoke she looked over my
shoulder at my father, whose bow, I presume, told her he was a
gentleman, for she spoke to him immediately as if she wished to
please and seated us in _fauteuils_ near the fire.

I then had a full view of her face--figure very thin and
melancholy dark eyes, long sallow cheeks, compressed thin lips,
two or three black ringlets on a high forehead, a cap that Mrs.
Grier might wear--altogether in appearance of fallen fortunes,
worn-out health, and excessive but guarded irritability. To me
there was nothing of that engaging, captivating manner which I had
been taught to expect. She seemed to me to be alive only to
literary quarrels and jealousies. The muscles of her face as she
spoke, or as my father spoke to her, quickly and too easily
expressed hatred and anger.... She is now, you know, _devote
acharnee_.... Madame de Genlis seems to have been so much used to
being attacked that she has defence and apologies ready prepared.
She spoke of Madame de Stael's 'Delphine' with detestation....
Forgive me, my dear Aunt Mary; you begged me to see her with
favourable eyes, and I went, after seeing her 'Rosiere de
Salency,' with the most favourable disposition, but I could not
like her.... And from time to time I saw, or thought I saw,
through the gloom of her countenance a gleam of coquetry. But my
father judges of her much more favourably than I do. She evidently
took pains to please him, and he says he is sure she is a person
over whose mind he could gain great ascendency.

The 'young and gay philosopher' at fifty is not unchanged since we knew
him first. Maria adds a postscript:

I had almost forgotten to tell you that the little girl who showed
us in is a girl whom she is educating. 'Elle m'appelle maman, mais
elle n'est pas ma fille.' The manner in which this little girl
spoke to Madame de Genlis and looked at her appeared to me more in
her favour than anything else. I went to look at what the child
was writing; she was translating Darwin's _Zoonomia_.

Every description one reads by Miss Edgeworth of actual things and
people makes one wish that she had written more of them. This one is the
more interesting from the contrast of the two women, both so remarkable
and coming to so