Mme. de Beauseant had fair hair and dark eyes, and the pale complexion that belongs to fair hair.  She held up her brow nobly like some fallen angel, grown proud through the fall, disdainful of pardon.  Her way of gathering her thick hair into a crown of plaits above the broad, curving lines of the bandeaux upon her forehead, added to the queenliness of her face.  Imagination could discover the ducal coronet of Burgundy in the spiral threads of her golden hair; all the courage of her house seemed to gleam from the great lady’s brilliant eyes, such courage as women use to repel audacity or scorn, for they were full of tenderness for gentleness.  The outline of that little head, so admirably poised above the long, white throat, the delicate, fine features, the subtle curves of the lips, the mobile face itself, wore an expression of delicate discretion, a faint semblance of irony suggestive of craft and insolence.  Yet it would have been difficult to refuse forgiveness to those two feminine failings in her; for the lines that came out in her forehead whenever her face was not in repose, like her upward glances (that pathetic trick of manner), told unmistakably of unhappiness, of a passion that had all but cost her her life.  A woman, sitting in the great, silent salon, a woman cut off from the rest of the world in this remote little valley, alone, with the memories of her brilliant, happy, and impassioned youth, of continual gaiety and homage paid on all sides, now replaced by the horrors of the void—­was there not something in the sight to strike awe that deepened with reflection?  Consciousness of her own value lurked in her smile.  She was neither wife nor mother, she was an outlaw; she had lost the one heart that could set her pulses beating without shame; she had nothing from without to support her reeling soul; she must even look for strength from within, live her own life, cherish no hope save that of forsaken love, which looks forward to Death’s coming, and hastens his lagging footsteps.  And this while life was in its prime.  Oh! to feel destined for happiness and to die—­never having given nor received it!  A woman too!  What pain was this!  These thoughts flashing across M. de Nueil’s mind like lightning, left him very humble in the presence of the greatest charm with which woman can be invested.  The triple aureole of beauty, nobleness, and misfortune dazzled him; he stood in dreamy, almost open-mouthed admiration of the Vicomtesse.  But he found nothing to say to her.

Mme. de Beauseant, by no means displeased, no doubt, by his surprise, held out her hand with a kindly but imperious gesture; then, summoning a smile to her pale lips, as if obeying, even yet, the woman’s impulse to be gracious: 

“I have heard from M. de Champignelles of a message which you have kindly undertaken to deliver, monsieur,” she said.  “Can it be from——­”

With that terrible phrase Gaston understood, even more clearly than before, his own ridiculous position, the bad taste and bad faith of his behavior towards a woman so noble and so unfortunate.  He reddened.  The thoughts that crowded in upon him could be read in his troubled eyes; but suddenly, with the courage which youth draws from a sense of its own wrongdoing, he gained confidence, and very humbly interrupted Mme. de Beauseant.