Page:Tales of Three Cities (Boston, James R. Osgood & Co., 1884).djvu/334

322 attracted and detained the eye. The young man, from his corner (he was almost as much enfoncé as Mrs. Mesh), used to watch her; and he could easily see what his aunt had meant by saying she had a serpentine figure. She was slim and flexible, she took attitudes which would have been awkward in other women, but which her charming pliancy made natural. She reminded him of a celebrated actress in Paris, who was the ideal of tortuous thinness. Miss Torrance used often to seat herself for a short time at the piano; and though she never had been taught this art (she played only by ear), her musical feeling was such that she charmed the twilight hour. Mrs. Mesh sat on one side of the fire, as I have said, and Florimoud on the other; the two might have been found in this relation,—listening, face to face,—almost any day in the week. Mrs. Mesh raved about her new friend, as they said in Boston,—I mean about Rachel Torrance, not about Florimond Daintry. She had at last got hold of a mind that understood her own (Mrs. Mesh's mind contained depths of mystery), and she sacrificed herself, generally, to throw her companion into relief. Her sacrifice was rewarded, for the girl was universally liked and admired; she was a new type altogether; she was the lioness of the winter. Florimond had an opportunity to see his native town in one of its fits of enthusiasm. He had heard of the infatuations of Boston, literary and social; of its capacity for giving itself with intensity to a