affirm. "One does not need to be a physical
Colossus in order to see the stars."

The morning after her first reception she was smiling rather
sardonically at a picture at the far end of the great salon--that of a
very handsome young woman who laughed frankly at the man who leaned
towards her and spoke. The man was Dumaresque.

"No use in that, Loris," commented his god-mother, out of his
hearing. "It will do an artist no harm, but it will end nowhere."

Their attitude and their youth did make them appear sentimental; but
they were not really so. He was only telling her what a shock she had
been to those Parisians the day before.

"I understand, now, the regard of Madame Choudey and her pretty, prim
niece, Sidonie. They will never forgive me."

"You, Madame!"

"Me, Monsieur. Their fondness will preclude resentment towards you,
but against myself they will feel a grievance that I am not as they
pictured me. Come; you must tell Maman."

The dowager nodded as one who understood it all.

"They will not forget you, that is sure," she said, smiling; but the
girl--for she was only a girl, despite the Madame--shrugged her
shoulders.

"Myself, I care little for their remembrance," she replied,
indifferently; "they were only curious, not interested, I could see."

"You put my picture in the shadow at all events," protested
Dumaresque, pointing to a large canvas hung opposite; "my picture over
which art lovers raved until you appeared as a rival."

"How extravagant you are, Monsieur Dumaresque, a true Gascon! To think
of rivaling that!"

As she faced the canvas the dowager watched her critically, and nodded
her approval to Dumaresque, who smiled and acquiesced. Evidently they
were both well satisfied with the living picture of the salon.

The new Marquise de Caron had lived, probably, twenty years. She was
of medium height, with straight, dark brows, and dark, long-lashed
eyes. The eyes had none of the shyness that was deemed a necessity to
beauty in that era of balloon skirts and scuttle bonnets under which
beauty of the conventional order hid.

But that she was not conventional was shown by the turban of grey
resting on her waved, dark hair, while the veil falling from it and
mingling with the folds of her dress, suggested the very artistic
draperies of the nuns.

Not a particle of color was in her apparel, and but little in her
face; only the lips had that thread of scarlet sung of by Solomon, and
the corne