"As yet," she continued--evidently her keen perception had detected her visitor's vanity, and she skilfully played upon it--"as yet, I do not know the names of all. I see more than three, however; I can distinguish four, perhaps five, and--who knows?--still more. One of them is certainly Mercury, which bestows clearness and colour upon intelligence and speech. You will become a poet--I see it in your eyes, and in the upper part of your face; in the lower you are under the sway of widely different stars, almost all of them of opposite characters. I discern, too, the influence of the sun in the pose of your head, and in the manner in which you throw it back on the left shoulder. What is your name?" Lamartine, who had already won distinction as a poet, told her. "I had never heard it," she exclaimed, with a convincing accent of sincerity; "but, poet or not, I like you, and have hope for you." "Go," she added; "dinner is served. Dine quickly, and return soon. I go to meditate upon you, and to see more clearly into the confusion of my ideas respecting your person and your future." * * * * * Lamartine had scarcely concluded his dinner when Lady Hester sent for him. He found her smoking a long Oriental pipe, the fellow of which she ordered to be brought for his own use. Accustomed to see the most graceful women of the East with their tchibouques, he was neither surprised nor shocked by the gracious, _nonchalant_ attitude, or the light wreaths of perfumed smoke issuing from Lady Hester's finely curved lips, interrupting the conversation without chilling it. They conversed together for a long time upon the favourite subject--the unique, mysterious theme of that extraordinary woman, or the modern Circe of the Desert, who so completely recalled to mind the famous female magicians of antiquity. The religious opinions of Lady Hester seemed to her guest a skilful though confused mixture of the various creeds among which she was condemned--or had condemned herself--to live.