Hélène was three years younger than I; she was blonde and pale; her manner was kindly, but cold, and her large blue eyes, her aquiline nose, her large, fine forehead often bent forwards, gave her an imposing and, at the same time, a melancholy expression. As a child she had always been quiet; hers was a silent and self-contained nature, indifferent to the joys and pleasures of her age; always very sedentary and very nonchalant, she laughed seldom, and dreamed a great deal. Her eyebrows were of a darker shade of blonde than her magnificent hair,--they were thick, and perhaps too well marked. Her foot was charming, and her hand, though rather long, was of antique beauty; her tall, slight, and willowy figure was remarkably perfect, but she held herself very badly, and almost always, through indolence, kept her white and round shoulders bowed forwards, in spite of her mother's continual scoldings. As to her mind, I had never paid any attention to it before; she had always shown herself thoughtful and solicitous in the affection she evinced towards my father, and, as I have said, her behaviour to me was always of a sisterly kind. She was altogether of an affectionate and tender nature, charitable and benevolent towards every one, but she was very proud and high-spirited at times, and extremely susceptible to the slightest allusion she suspected any one about to make on the subject of her poverty. I very well remember that, before my father's death, Hélène had sulked at me for quite a long time because I had been stupid and thoughtless enough to say before her that young girls without fortunes were almost always from their birth destined for gouty old fellows who were tired of society, and wanted some nice young girl of good family who would be willing to pass the rest of her life in their peevish society. Hélène's mother, who was my father's sister, was a weak, heedless woman, but she was good, witty, and very _distinguée._ Her husband held for a long time a high diplomatic position, but being very prodigal, a gambler, loving display and all that was luxurious, in his desire to represent his country as sumptuously as possible, he had entirely wasted his own fortune as well as that of his wife; so that the latter was left at his death, if not in absolute poverty, at least in honourable but poor circumstances. I had never in my life taken into consideration the disproportion of fortune that existed between Hélène and myself. Neither did I think about it at all, when I began to notice her beauty, for I believe that one of the most salient traits of the young who find themselves rich without any labour is to try to colour everything with a golden tinge reflected from their own gay prism.