lasting impression on my memory. One might expect, perhaps,
from such a prelude, to find in the old Marquise traces of
stately demeanour, or a regretted superiority. Nothing of
the kind. She herself was a short, square-built woman, with
large head and strong features, framed in a mob cap, with a
broad frill which flopped over her tortoise-shell spectacles.
She wore a black bombazine gown, and list slippers. When in
the garden, where she was always busy in the summer-time, she
put on wooden sabots over her slippers.

Despite this homely exterior, she herself was a 'lady' in
every sense of the word. Her manner was dignified and
courteous to everyone. To her daughters and to myself she
was gentle and affectionate. Her voice was sympathetic,
almost musical. I never saw her temper ruffled. I never
heard her allude to her antecedents.

The daughters were as unlike their mother as they were to one
another. Adele, the eldest, was very stout, with a profusion
of grey ringlets. She spoke English fluently. I gathered,
from her mysterious nods and tosses of the head, (to be sure,
her head wagged a little of its own accord, the ringlets too,
like lambs' tails,) that she had had an AFFAIRE DE COEUR with
an Englishman, and that the perfidious islander had removed
from the Continent with her misplaced affections. She was a
trifle bitter, I thought - for I applied her insinuations to
myself - against Englishmen generally. But, though cynical
in theory, she was perfectly amiable in practice. She
superintended the menage and spent the rest of her life in
making paper flowers. I should hardly have known they were