Estelle heard this with great satisfaction. 'We shall go to the
Mediterranean Sea and be in danger,' she said to herself, unfolding the
map at the beginning of her Telemaque; 'that is quite right! Perhaps
we shall see Calypso's island.'

She begged hard to be allowed to sit up that evening to see the hero of
the escape from the Tower of London, as well as the travelling
companion destined for her, and she prevailed, for mamma pronounced
that she had been very sage and reasonable all day, and the grandmamma,
who was so soon to part with her, could refuse her nothing. So she was
full dressed, with hair curled, and permitted to stand by the tall
high-backed chair where the old lady sat to receive her visitors.

The Marquise de Varennes was a small withered woman, with keen eyes,
and a sort of sparkle of manner, and power of setting people at ease,
that made her the more charming the older she grew. An experienced eye
could detect that she retained the costume of the prime of Louis XIV.,
when headdresses were less high than that which her daughter was
obliged to wear. For the two last mortal hours of that busy day had
poor Madame de Bourke been compelled to sit under the hands of the
hairdresser, who was building up, with paste and powder and the like,
an original conception of his, namely, a northern landscape, with snow-
laden trees, drifts of snow, diamond icicles, and even a cottage beside
an ice-bound stream. She could ill spare the time, and longed to be
excused; but the artist had begged so hard to be allowed to carry out
his brilliant and unique idea, this last time of attending on Madame
l'Ambassadrice, that there was no resisting him, and perhaps her
strange forebodings made her less willing to inflict a disappointment
on the poor man. It would have been strange to contrast the fabric of