It came all too soon; Madame was ill and could see no one. I was not,
however, to be baffled by one rebuff. Handing the basket I held to
the girl, I urged her to take it in and show her mistress what it
contained, saying it was a rare article which might never again come
her way.

The girl complied, though with a doubtful shake of the head which was
anything but encouraging. Her incredulity, however, must have been
speedily rebuked, for she almost immediately returned without the
basket, saying Madame would see me.

My first thoughts upon entering the grand lady's presence, was that
the girl had been mistaken, for I found the Countess walking the
floor in an abstracted way, drying a letter she had evidently but just
completed, by shaking it to and fro with an unsteady hand; the
placque I had brought, lying neglected on the table.

But at sight of my respectful form standing with bent head in the
doorway, she hurriedly thrust the letter into a book and took up the
placque. As she did so I marked her well and almost started at the
change I observed in her since that evening at the Academy. It was
not only that she was dressed in some sort of loose dishabille that
was in eminent contrast to the sweeping silks and satins in which I
had hitherto beheld her adorned; or that she was laboring under some
physical disability that robbed her dark cheek of the bloom that was
its chiefest charm. The change I observed went deeper than that; it
was more as if a light had been extinguished in her countenance. It
was the same woman I had beheld standing like a glowing column of
will and strength before the melancholy form of Mr. Blake, but with
the will and strength gone, and with them all the glow.