well be forgiven for so doing. Not often does it fall to the lot of men
to see a more bewitching face than the face of Victorine Dubois. Many a
woman might be found fairer and of a nobler cast of feature; but in the
countenance of Victorine Dubois was an unaccountable charm wellnigh
independent of feature, of complexion, of all which goes to the ordinary
summing up of a woman's beauty. There was in the glance of her eye a
something, I know not what, which no man living could wholly resist. It
was at once defiant and alluring, tender and mocking, artless and
mischievous. No man could make it out; no man might see it twice alike
in the space of an hour. No more was the girl herself twice alike in an
hour, or a day, for that matter. She was far more like some frolicsome
creature of the woods than like a mortal woman. The quality of wildness
which Willan had felt in her voice was in her nature. Neither her
grandfather nor her mother had in the least comprehended her during the
few months she had lived with them. A certain gentleness of nature,
which was far more physical than mental, far more an idle nonchalance
than recognition of relations to others, had blinded them to her real
capriciousness and selfishness. They rarely interfered with her, or
observed her with any discrimination. Their love was content with her
surface of good humor, gayety, and beauty; she was an ever-present
delight and pride to them both, and that she might only partially
reciprocate this fondness never crossed their minds. They did not
realize that during all these eighteen years that they had been caring,
planning, and plotting for her their names had represented nothing in
her mind except unseen, unknown relatives to whom she was indebted for
support, but to whom she also owed what she hated and rebelled
against,--her imprisonment in the convent. Why should she love them?
Blood tells, however; and when Victorine found herself free, and face to
face with the grandfather of whom she had so long heard and only once
seen, and the Aunt Jeanne who had been described to her as the loving