And yet this father and mother had a certain secret pride in the accomplishments of their daughter.  Parents always do.  Her independence sort of kept them vibrating between ecstasies of joy and chills of fear.

The Princess was plain in feature but finely formed, and had attracted the favorable attention of various worthy young men, but no man had ever dared to make love to her except by post or proxy.  Several lovers had pressed their claims, making appeal through her father; but the Duke of Orleans, strong as he was, never had cared to intimate to his daughter a suggestion as to whom she should wed.  Love to her was a high and holy sacrament, and a marriage of convenience or diplomacy was to the mind of the Princess immoral and abhorrent.

The father knew her views and respected them.

But happiness is not a matter of intellect.  And in spite of her brilliant, daring mind the Princess of Orleans was fretting her soul out against the bars of environment:  she lacked employment; she longed to do, to act, to be.

She had ambitions in the line of art, and believed she had talent that was worth cultivating.

And so it was that Ary Scheffer, the acknowledged man of talent, was invited to Neuilly.

He came.

He was twenty-nine years of age; the Princess was twenty-five.

The ennui of unused powers and corroding heart-hunger had made the Princess old before her time.  Scheffer’s fight with adversity had long before robbed him of his youth.

These two eyed each other curiously.

The gentle, mild-voiced artist knew his place and did not presume on terms of equality with the Princess who traced a direct pedigree to Louis the Great.  He thought to wait and allow her gradually to show her quality.

She tried her caustic wit upon him, and he looked at her out of mild blue eyes and made no reply.  He had no intention of competing with her on her own preserve; and he had a pride in his profession that equaled her pride of birth.

He looked at her—­just looked at her in silence.  And this spoilt child, before whom all others quailed, turned scarlet, stammered and made apology.

In good sooth, she had played tierce and thrust with every man she had met, and had come off without a scar; but here was a man of pride and poise, and yet far beneath her in a social way, and he had rebuked her haughty spirit by a simple look.

A London lawyer has recently put in a defense for wife-beating, on the grounds that there are women who should be chastised for their own good.  I do not go quite this far, but from the time Scheffer rebuked the Princess of Orleans by refusing to reply to her saucy tongue there was a perfect understanding between them.  The young woman listened respectfully if he spoke, and when he painted followed his work with eager eyes.

At last she had met one who was not intent on truckling for place and pelf.  His ideals were as high and excellent as her own—­his mind more sincere.  Life was more to him than to her, because he was working his energies up into art, and she was only allowing her powers to rust.