“One instant, madame,” replied the Abbé. “I will not detain you longer; but at a crisis like the present what I have to say merits your most earnest attention. In the first place, will you permit Célandine to examine if the outer door be shut?” The scowl on the quadroon’s brow grew deeper, while, in obedience to a sign from her mistress, she retired into the outer chamber. The Marquise seated herself on a couch near the toilet-table, spreading her skirts out carefully, lest their freshness might sustain damage in that position, and prepared to receive her cousin’s confidences, as he stood near, cool, polished, smiling, but obviously repressing, with an effort, the strong agitation under which he laboured. While she sat in that graceful attitude, her head turned up towards his face, one beautifully moulded arm and hand resting in her lap, the other yet ungloved holding a closed fan against her lips, it may have occurred to the Abbé that so many charms of person and manner might be applied to a worthier purpose than the furtherance of Court intrigues or the advancement of any one man’s ambition. It may even have occurred to him, though doubtless if it did so the thought had to be stifled as it rose, that it would be no unpleasant task, however difficult, to woo and win and wear such beauty for himself and his own happiness; and that to be his cousin’s favoured lover was a more enviable position than could be afforded by comptroller’s wand, or cardinal’s cap, or minister’s portfolio. For a moment his rugged features softened like a clearing landscape under a gleam of sun, while he looked on her and basked, as it were, in the radiance of her beauty, ere he turned back to the chill, shadowy labyrinth of deceit in which he spent his life. Madame de Montmirail’s exterior was of that sparkling kind which, like the diamond, is enhanced by the richness of its setting. In full Court toilette as he saw her now, few women would have cared to enter the lists as her rivals. The dress she wore was of pale yellow satin, displaying, indeed, with considerable liberality, her graceful neck and shoulders, glowing in the warm tints of a brunette. It fitted close to her well-turned bust, spreading into an enormous volume of skirts below the waist, overlaid by a delicate fabric of black lace, and looped up here and there in strings of pearls. Her waving hair, black and glossy, was turned back from a low, broad forehead, and gathered behind her ears into a shining mass, from which a ringlet or two escaped, smooth and elastic, to coil, snake-like, on her bosom. One row of large pearls encircled her neck, and one bracelet of diamonds and emeralds clung to her ungloved arm. Other ornaments she had none, though an open dressing-case on the toilet-table flashed and glittered like a jeweller’s shop.