n lesser lights. Mrs. Croix
sat in the middle of the room, and her chair being somewhat higher and
more elaborate than its companions, suggested a throne: Madame de Stael
set the fashion in many affectations which were not long travelling to
America. In the house, Mrs. Croix discarded the hoopskirt, and the
classic folds of her soft muslin gown revealed a figure as superb in
contour as it was majestic in carriage. Her glittering hair was in a
tower, and the long oval of her face gave to this monstrous head-dress
an air of proportion. Her brows and lashes were black, her eyes the
deepest violet that ever man had sung, childlike when widely opened, but
infinitely various with a drooping lash. The nose was small and
aquiline, fine and firm, the nostril thin and haughty. The curves of her
mouth included a short upper lip, a full under one, and a bend at the
corners. There was a deep cleft in the chin. Technically her hair was
auburn; when the sun flooded it her admirers vowed they counted twenty
shades of red, yellow, sorrel, russet, and gold. Even under the soft
rays of the candles it was crisp with light and colour. The dazzling
skin and soft contours hid a jaw that denoted both strength and
appetite, and her sweet gracious manner gave little indication of her
imperious will, independent mind, and arrogant intellect. She looked to
be twenty-eight, but was reputed to have been born in 1769. For women so
endowed years have little meaning. They are born with what millions of
their sex never acquire, a few with the aid of time and experience only.
Nature had fondly and diabolically equipped her to conquer the world, to
be one of its successes; and so she was to the last of her ninety-six
years. Her subsequent career was as brilliant in Europe as it had been,
and was to be again, in America. In Paris, Lafayette was her sponsor,
and she counted princes, cardinals, and nobles among her conquests, and
died in the abundance of wealth and honours. If her sins found her out,
they surprised her in secret only. To the world she gave no sign, and
carried an unbroken spirit and an unbowed head into a vault which looks
as if not even the trump of Judgement Day could force its marble doors
to open and its secrets to come forth. But those doors closed behind her
seventy-seven years later, when the greatest of her victims had been
dust half a century, and many others were long since forgotten.
To-night, in her glorious triumphant womanhood sh