After dinner I sang.  Then Mr. Pollingray read an amusing essay to us, and retired to his library.  Miss Pollingray sat and talked to me of her brother, and of her nephew—­for whom it is that Mr. Pollingray is beginning to receive company, and is going into society.  Charles’s subsequently received letter explained the ‘receive company.’  I could not comprehend it at the time.

’The house has been shut up for years, or rarely inhabited by us for more than a month in the year.  Mr. Pollingray prefers France.  All his asociations, I may say his sympathies, are in France.  Latterly he seems to have changed a little; but from Normandy to Touraine and Dauphiny—­we had a triangular home over there.  Indeed, we have it still.  I am never certain of my brother.’

While Miss Pollingray was speaking, my eyes were fixed on a Vidal crayon drawing, faintly coloured with chalks, of a foreign lady—­I could have sworn to her being French—­young, quite girlish, I doubt if her age was more than mine.

She is pretty, is she not?’ said Miss Pollingray.

She is almost beautiful,’ I exclaimed, and Miss Pollingray, seeing my curiosity, was kind enough not to keep me in suspense.

’That is the Marquise de Mazardouin—­nee Louise de Riverolles.  You will see other portraits of her in the house.  This is the most youthful of them, if I except one representing a baby, and bearing her initials.’

I remembered having noticed a similarity of feature in some of the portraits in the different rooms.  My longing to look at them again was like a sudden jet of flame within me.  There was no chance of seeing them till morning; so, promising myself to dream of the face before me, I dozed through a conversation with my hostess, until I had got the French lady’s eyes and hair and general outline stamped accurately, as I hoped, on my mind.  I was no sooner on my way to bed than all had faded.  The torment of trying to conjure up that face was inconceivable.  I lay, and tossed, and turned to right and to left, and scattered my sleep; but by and by my thoughts reverted to Mr. Pollingray, and then like sympathetic ink held to the heat, I beheld her again; but vividly, as she must have been when she was sitting to the artist.  The hair was naturally crisped, waving thrice over the forehead and brushed clean from the temples, showing the small ears, and tied in a knot loosely behind.  Her eyebrows were thick and dark, but soft; flowing eyebrows; far lovelier, to my thinking, than any pencilled arch.  Dark eyes, and full, not prominent.  I find little expression of inward sentiment in very prominent eyes.  On the contrary they seem to have a fish-like dependency of gaze on what is without, and show fishy depths, if any.  For instance, my eyes are rather prominent, and I am just the little fool—­but the French lady is my theme.  Madame la Marquise, your eyes are sweeter to me than celestial.  I never saw such candour and unaffected innocence in eyes before.  Accept the compliment of the pauvre Anglaise.  Did you do mischief with them?  Did Vidal’s delicate sketch do justice to you?  Your lips and chin and your throat all repose in such girlish grace, that if ever it is my good fortune to see you, you will not be aged to me!