lady-like features of Lady Willoughby, with her hair aristocratically enough drawn up, heaped high, and powdered, had yet an air of half-sleepy ease and comfort that offered the strongest contrast to French looks, or that the hood-like bonnet of black crape which surmounted them, drawn in folds together and hung with its short curtain-like veil of black lace, however according to matronly usage then in London, had already been left behind in Paris by a barer and more classical taste; or the girlish grace and bloom of Rose in her mourning-dress and hat; the half clerical air of Mr Thorpe, with his mingled awkwardness and endeavours at attention to the ladies; or the military air, tall figure, and splendid English hunter of the baronet: all which, perhaps, taken together, might even in passing have suggested food for the proverbial Parisian curiosity. Especially if, as at times might have been done, they had noticed the grave silence of the elderly English gentleman on horseback, when his companion addressed him in vain, or when with a start he looked up to answer, sometimes running his eye keenly about the passing people, over the seated and trifling groups, up to the windows of the houses, or along the shop-signs, like one all at once awake to them. Indeed, out of the charmingly private _allée des veuves_ in the Elysian fields, where alone the equipages of the rich widows of the whole capital were in propriety seen to drive, and the doubtful widowers and needy bachelors to seek opportunities of consoling them, with a similar gravity of dress and demeanour—it was questionable whether the people of Paris were accustomed to observe so puzzlingly attractive a sight. It had altogether, no doubt, a sincere insular air in their eyes.