'_Mais j'espere bien!_' cried Mademoiselle Bourde, holding up her head and opening her eyes very wide. 'Such friendships as we form, and, I may say, as we inspire! _Je m'en rapporte a Effie_', the governess continued. 'We have received immense kindness; we have established relations that are so pleasant for us, Cousin Raymond. We have the _entree_ of so many charming homes,' Mrs. Temperly remarked. 'But ours is the most charming of all; that I will say,' exclaimed Mademoiselle Bourde. 'Isn't it so, Effie?' 'Oh yes, I think it is; especially when we are expecting the Marquise,' Effie responded. Then she added, 'But here she comes now; I hear her carriage in the court.' The Marquise too was just one of themselves; she was a part of their charming home. 'She _is_ such a love!' said Mrs. Temperly to the foreign gentleman, with an irrepressible movement of benevolence. To which Raymond heard the gentleman reply that, Ah, she was the most distinguished woman in France. 'Do you know Madame de Brives?' Effie asked of Raymond, while they were waiting for her to come in. She came in at that moment, and the girl turned away quickly without an answer. 'How in the world should I know her?' That was the answer he would have been tempted to give. He felt very much out of Cousin Maria's circle. The foreign gentleman fingered his moustache and looked at him sidewise. The Marquise was a very pretty woman, fair and slender, of middle age, with a smile, a complexion, a diamond necklace, of great splendour, and a charming manner. Her greeting to her friends was sweet and familiar, and was accompanied with much kissing, of a sisterly, motherly, daughterly kind; and yet with this expression of simple, almost homely sentiment there was something in her that astonished and dazzled. She might very well have been, as the foreign young man said, the most distinguished woman in France. Dora had not rushed forward to meet her with nearly so much _empressement_ as Effie, and this gave him a chance to ask the former who she was. The girl replied that she was her mother's most intimate friend: to which he rejoined that that was not a description; what he wanted to know was her title to this exalted position. 'Why, can't you see it? She is beautiful and she is good.' 'I see that she is beautiful; but how can I see that she is good?' 'Good to mamma, I mean, and to Effie and Tishy.' 'And isn't she good to you?' 'Oh, I don't know her so well. But I delight to look at her.'