a class which had done so much towards shattering my faith and
lowering my estimate of her sex. Lavedan had married her and brought
her into Languedoc, and here she spent her years lamenting the scenes
of her youth, and prone, it would seem, to make them matter for
conversation whenever a newcomer chanced to present himself at the
chateau.

Looking from her to her daughter, I thanked Heaven that Roxalanne
was no reproduction of the mother. She had inherited as little of
her character as of her appearance. Both in feature and in soul
Mademoiselle de Lavedan was a copy of that noble, gallant gentleman,
her father.

One other was present at that meal, of whom I shall have more to
say hereafter. This was a young man of good presence, save, perhaps,
a too obtrusive foppishness, whom Monsieur de Lavedan presented to
me as a distant kinsman of theirs, one Chevalier de Saint-Eustache.
He was very tall - of fully my own height - and of an excellent
shape, although extremely young. But his head if anything was too
small for his body, and his good-natured mouth was of a weakness
that was confirmed by the significance of his chin, whilst his eyes
were too closely set to augur frankness.

He was a pleasant fellow, seemingly of that negative pleasantness
that lies in inoffensiveness, but otherwise dull and of an untutored
mind - rustic, as might be expected in one the greater part of whose
life had been spent in his native province, and of a rusticity
rendered all the more flagrant by the very efforts he exerted to
dissemble it.