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166 ished Corsican house that had flourished and fallen in a gaunt castle which frowned above a little village on the west coast of the island.

She was superb and placid like a Raphael with a touch of Titian, and beneath the curly mist of her golden hair the heritage, doubtless, of some Viking ancestor—black eyes looked out with the sort of feminine pathos which meant nothing in particular—except to M. de Saint-Hubertin, who adored her. She was not supremely brilliant, nor had she the sound education which a Frenchwoman of her rank would have had, but she was filled with something that took the place of both; something best described as a deep, luminous vivacity and a quick, trenchant wit which was slightly cruel at times.

After their marriage, when her husband wanted to take her away from the little Corsican village, to Paris, to the palace in the Rue de Crenelle, so that she should take the place in society due her by his name and escutcheon, she laughed with a flash of small, white, even teeth.

She replied that Corsica was her own land, the land which she loved and understood—the land which loved and understood her.