lady loitering negligently in the background, and introduced in a
comprehensive murmur to the American group, as the redoubtable
sister-in-law to whom he had declared himself ready to throw down
his challenge.

There was nothing very redoubtable about Madame de Treymes, except
perhaps the kindly yet critical observation which she bestowed on
her sister-in-law's visitors: the unblinking attention of a
civilized spectator observing an encampment of aborigines. He had
heard of her as a beauty, and was surprised to find her, as Nannie
afterward put it, a mere stick to hang clothes on (but they _did_
hang!), with a small brown glancing face, like that of a charming
little inquisitive animal. Yet before she had addressed ten words to
him--nibbling at the hard English consonants like nuts--he owned the
justice of the epithet. She was a beauty, if beauty, instead of
being restricted to the cast of the face, is a pervasive attribute
informing the hands, the voice, the gestures, the very fall of a
flounce and tilt of a feather. In this impalpable _aura_ of grace
Madame de Treymes' dark meagre presence unmistakably moved, like a
thin flame in a wide quiver of light. And as he realized that she
looked much handsomer than she was, so while they talked, he felt
that she understood a great deal more than she betrayed. It was not
through the groping speech which formed their apparent medium of
communication that she imbibed her information: she found it in the
air, she extracted it from Durham's look and manner, she caught it
in the turn of her sister-in-law's defenseless eyes--for in her
presence Madame de Malrive became Fanny Frisbee again!--she put it
together, in short, out of just such unconsidered indescribable
trifles as differentiated the quiet felicity of her dress from
Nannie and Katy's "handsome" haphazard clothes.