Page:Georges Eekhoud - Escal Vigor, a novel.djvu/102

78 limpid and trusting, of clear sapphire blue; a mouth curved gracefully and with a touch of melancholy; somewhat curly hair, of a light ash hue, parted in two halves on a forehead of immaculate ivory. Of moderate stature and admirable proportions, in her peasant dress she might have passed for a young lady of quality masquerading as a shepherdess.

On her side, Blandine felt herself drawn to this septuagenarian lady, who, though of noble family, was free from haughtiness and affectation, and would not have been out of place, by reason of her philosophical bent, in the days of Diderot and the Encyclopedia. A woman of liberal culture and without prejudices, if she still retained some feeling of pride in her aristocratic birth, it was because, in comparing herself with the upstarts who surrounded her, she was compelled to recognize the superiority in sentiments, tone and education of a caste ever decreasing in numbers, and even more reduced and proscribed by the puddled blood of financial misalliances than by the guillotine and September massacres. But, on the other hand, she considered as a truly aristocratic appanage those high qualities of heart and mind which