meeting with Isaura the evening before; and remembering the curtness with
which Graham had implied disinclination to converse about the fair
Italian, he felt perplexed how to reconcile the impulse of his good
nature with the discretion imposed on his good-breeding. At all events,
a compliment to the lady whom Graham had so admired could do no harm.

"How well Mademoiselle Cicogna looked last night!"

"Did she? It seemed to me that, in health at least, she did not look
very well. Have you heard what day M. Thiers will speak on the war?"

"Thiers? No. Who cares about Thiers? Thank heaven his day is past!
I don't know any unmarried woman in Paris, not even Valerie--I mean
Mademoiselle Duplessis--who has so exquisite a taste in dress as
Mademoiselle Cicogna. Generally speaking, the taste of a female author
is atrocious."

"Really--I did not observe her dress. I am no critic on subjects so
dainty as the dress of ladies, or the tastes of female authors."

"Pardon me," said the beau Marquis, gravely. "As to dress, I think that
so essential a thing in the mind of woman, that no man who cares about
women ought to disdain critical study of it. In woman, refinement of
character is never found in vulgarity of dress. I have only observed
that truth since I came up from Bretagne."

"I presume, my dear Marquis, that you may have read in Bretagne books
which very few not being professed scholars have ever read at Paris;
and possibly you may remember that Horace ascribes the most exquisite
refinement in dress, denoted by the untranslatable words, 'simplex