Page:Cerise, a tale of the last century (IA cerisetaleoflast00whytrich).pdf/488

 So Justine bustled about discontentedly, and her expressive French face, usually so pleasant and lively, now looked dull, and bilious, and cross.

She brightened up a little, nevertheless, when a chair stopped at the door, and a visitor was announced. The street, though off the Strand, then a fashionable locality, was yet tolerably quiet and retired.

It cheered Justine's spirits to bring up a gentleman's name for admission; and she almost recovered her good-*humour when she learned he was a countryman of her own.

The Marquise, sipping chocolate and dressed to go out, received her visitor more than cordially. She had been restless at Chateau-la-Fierté, restless in Paris, restless through her whole journey, and was now restless in London. But restlessness is borne the easier when we have some one to share it with; and this young man had reason to be gratified with the welcome accorded him by so celebrated a beauty as Madame de Montmirail.

She might almost have been his mother, it is true; but all his life he had accustomed himself to think of her as the brilliant Marquise with whom everybody of any pretence to distinction was avowedly in love, and without looking much at her face, or affecting her society, he accepted the situation too. What would you have? It was de rigueur. He declared himself her adorer just as he wore a Steinkirk cravat, and took snuff, though he hated it, from a diamond snuff-box.

The Marquise could not help people making fools of themselves, she said; and perhaps did not wish to help it. She too had dreamed her dream, and all was over. The sovereignty of beauty can at no time be disagreeable, least of all when the bloom begins to fade, and the empire grows day by day more precarious. If young Chateau-Guerrand chose to be as absurd as his uncle, let him singe his wings, or his wig, or any part of his attire he pleased. She was not going to put her lamp out because the cockchafer is a blunderer, and the moth a suicide.

He was a good-looking young gentleman enough, and in Justine's opinion seemed only the more attractive from the air of thorough coxcombry with which his whole deportment, person, and conversation were imbued. He had