Page:Teleny, or The Reverse of the Medal, t. II.djvu/143

 all their owner's efforts not to shew the tattoo which was being beaten within them; and this, I should think, is the finest compliment that can be paid to a woman's beauty, for it is a natural not a maudlin one.

"Her manners, however, had that repose, and her gait that calmness, which not only stamp the caste of Vere de Vere but which characterize an Italian peasant and a French grande dame, though never met with in the German aristocracy. She seemed born to reign as a queen of drawing-rooms, and therefore accepted as her due, and without the slightest show of pleasure, not only all the flattering articles of the fashionable papers, but also the respectful homage of a host of distant admirers, not one of whom would have dared to attempt a flirtation with her. To everybody she was like Juno, an irreproachable woman who might have been either a volcano or an iceberg."

"And may I ask what she was?"

"A lady who received and paid innumerable visits, and who seemed always to preside everywhere—at the dinner-parties she gave, and also at those she accepted,—therefore the paragon of a lady