There was nothing very redoubtable about Madame de Treymes, except perhaps the kindly yet critical observation which she bestowed on her sister-in-law’s visitors:  the unblinking attention of a civilized spectator observing an encampment of aborigines.  He had heard of her as a beauty, and was surprised to find her, as Nannie afterward put it, a mere stick to hang clothes on (but they did hang!), with a small brown glancing face, like that of a charming little inquisitive animal.  Yet before she had addressed ten words to him—­nibbling at the hard English consonants like nuts—­he owned the justice of the epithet.  She was a beauty, if beauty, instead of being restricted to the cast of the face, is a pervasive attribute informing the hands, the voice, the gestures, the very fall of a flounce and tilt of a feather.  In this impalpable aura of grace Madame de Treymes’ dark meagre presence unmistakably moved, like a thin flame in a wide quiver of light.  And as he realized that she looked much handsomer than she was, so while they talked, he felt that she understood a great deal more than she betrayed.  It was not through the groping speech which formed their apparent medium of communication that she imbibed her information:  she found it in the air, she extracted it from Durham’s look and manner, she caught it in the turn of her sister-in-law’s defenseless eyes—­for in her presence Madame de Malrive became Fanny Frisbee again!—­she put it together, in short, out of just such unconsidered indescribable trifles as differentiated the quiet felicity of her dress from Nannie and Katy’s “handsome” haphazard clothes.

Her actual converse with Durham moved, meanwhile, strictly in the conventional ruts:  had he been long in Paris, which of the new plays did he like best, was it true that American jeunes filles were sometimes taken to the Boulevard theatres?  And she threw an interrogative glance at the young ladies beside the tea-table.  To Durham’s reply that it depended how much French they knew, she shrugged and smiled, replying that his compatriots all spoke French like Parisians, enquiring, after a moment’s thought, if they learned it, la bas, des negres, and laughing heartily when Durham’s astonishment revealed her blunder.

When at length she had taken leave—­enveloping the Durham ladies in a last puzzled penetrating look—­Madame de Malrive turned to Mrs. Durham with a faintly embarrassed smile.

“My sister-in-law was much interested; I believe you are the first Americans she has ever known.”

“Good gracious!” ejaculated Nannie, as though such social darkness required immediate missionary action on some one’s part.

“Well, she knows us,” said Durham, catching in Madame de Malrive’s rapid glance, a startled assent to his point.

“After all,” reflected the accurate Katy, as though seeking an excuse for Madame de Treymes’ unenlightenment, “we don’t know many French people, either.”