in love, and had a mountain of difficulties and dangers to contend with; it added the “spice to the sauce,” and gave them the “relish of being forbidden.”  Besides, an open scandal would have been very shocking to her brilliant ladyship, and there was nothing on earth, perhaps, of which he would have had a more lively dread than a “scene”; but his present “friendship” was delightful, and presented no such dangers, while his fair “friend” was one of the greatest beauties and the greatest coquettes of her time.  Her smile was honor; her fan was a scepter; her face was perfect; and her heart never troubled herself or her lovers; if she had a fault, she was a trifle exacting, but that was not to be wondered at in one so omnipotent, and her chains, after all, were made of roses.

As she sat in the deep ruddy glow of the library fire, with the light flickering on her white brow and her violet velvets; as she floated to the head of her table, with opals shining among her priceless point laces, and some tropical flower with leaves of glistening gold crowning her bronze hair; as she glided down in a waltz along the polished floor, or bent her proud head over ecarte in a musing grace that made her opponent utterly forget to mark the king or even play his cards at all; as she talked in the low music of her voice of European imbrogli, and consols and coupons, for she was a politician and a speculator, or lapsed into a beautifully tinted study of la femme incomprise, when time and scene suited, when the stars were very clear above the terraces without, and the conservatory very solitary, and a touch of Musset or Owen Meredith chimed in well with the light and shade of the oleanders and the brown luster of her own eloquent glance—­in all these how superb she was!

And if in truth her bosom only fell with the falling of Shares, and rose with the rising of Bonds; if her soft shadows were only taken up, like the purple tinting under her lashes, to embellish her beauty; if in her heart of hearts she thought Musset a fool, and wondered why “Lucille” was not written in prose, in her soul far preferring “Le Follet”; why—­it did not matter, that I can see.  All great ladies gamble in stocks nowadays under the rose, and women are for the most part as cold, clear, hard, and practical as their adorers believe them the contrary; and a femme incomprise is so charming, when she avows herself comprehended by you, that you would never risk spoiling the confidence by hinting a doubt of its truth.  If she and Bertie only played at love; if neither believed much in the other; if each trifled with a pretty gossamer soufflet of passion much as they trifled with the soufflets at dinner; if both tried it to trifle away ennui much as they tried staking a Friedrich d’Or at Baden, this light, surface, fashionable, philosophic form of a passion they both laughed at, in its hot and serious follies, suited them admirably.  Had it ever mingled a grain of bitterness in her ladyship’s Souchong before dinner, or given an aroma of bitterness to her lover’s Naples punch in the smoking room, it would have been out of all keeping with themselves and their world.