"Then I fancy it must be because she is not quite sincere. I do not like
saying anything so unkind. You must not let it prejudice you against
her; but she gives me always the impression of a person who leads two
lives--one that everybody sees and one that nobody understands save
herself."

"How old should you imagine her to be?" I asked; and again my sister
looked uneasily at me.

"We have been in the habit of considering her a young girl," she
replied, "but do you know, Edgar, I believe she is more than thirty?"

"It is impossible!" I cried. "Why, Clare, she does not look a day more
than eighteen."

"She is what the French people call well preserved. She will look no
older for the next ten years. She has a girl's figure and a girl's face,
but a woman's heart, Edgar, I am sure of it."

"She is thirty, you say, and has been here for five years; that would
make her a woman of twenty-five before she left France. A French woman
of twenty-five has lived her life."

"That is just what I mean," she replied. "Rely upon it, for all her
girlish face and girlish ways, Coralie d'Aubergne has lived hers."

"Clare," I asked, half shyly, "how do you like Miss Thesiger?"

A look bright as a sunbeam came over my sister's face.