disparity between his thoughts and his words made him feel
uncomfortable.

The two ladies at first talked of painting, for women easily
guess the secret embarrassment of a first call; they themselves
feel it perhaps, and the nature of their mind supplies them with
a thousand devices to put an end to it. By questioning the young
man as to the material exercise of his art, and as to his
studies, Adelaide and her mother emboldened him to talk. The
indefinable nothings of their chat, animated by kind feeling,
naturally led Hippolyte to flash forth remarks or reflections
which showed the character of his habits and of his mind. Trouble
had prematurely faded the old lady's face, formerly handsome, no
doubt; nothing was left but the more prominent features, the
outline, in a word, the skeleton of a countenance of which the
whole effect indicated great shrewdness with much grace in the
play of the eyes, in which could be discerned the expression
peculiar to women of the old Court; an expression that cannot be
defined in words. Those fine and mobile features might quite as
well indicate bad feelings, and suggest astuteness and womanly
artifice carried to a high pitch of wickedness, as reveal the
refined delicacy of a beautiful soul.

Indeed, the face of a woman has this element of mystery to puzzle
the ordinary observer, that the difference between frankness and
duplicity, the genius for intrigue and the genius of the heart,
is there inscrutable. A man gifted with the penetrating eye can
read the intangible shade of difference produced by a more or
less curved line, a more or less deep dimple, a more or less
prominent feature. The appreciation of these indications lies