How her brown eyes widened, lightened, and what a sudden whiteness fell upon her features, as if June roses had been smitten with snow! Holding with both hands the frail fluted ivory handle of her parasol, it snapped, and the carved leopard that constituted the head fell with a ringing sound upon one of the marble blocks, thence into the sluggish water beneath; but her eyes had not moved from his,--seemed to hold them, as with some magnetic spell. A radiant smile parted her pale lips, and she said in her wonderfully sweet, rich, liquid tones which sank into people's ears and hearts, as some mellow old wine creeps through the grey cells of the brain, bringing lotos dreams: "Is the gentleman before me General Rene Laurance of America?" "I am, Madame; and supremely happy in the accident which enables me to make an acquaintance so long and earnestly desired. Surely the ruins amidst which we meet must be those, not of the Serapeon, but of some antique shrine of Good Fortune, and I vow a libation worthy of the boon received." With that unwavering gaze still upon his dark blue eyes, she drew off her glove and held out her fair hand, smiling the while, as Circe doubtless did before her. "I am sincerely glad to meet General Laurance, of whom I heard the American minister at Paris speak in glowing terms of commendation. I believe I Also met a son of General Laurance in Paris? Certainly he resembles you most strikingly." As he received into his own the pretty pearly hand, and bowed low over it, he felt agreeably surprised by the cordiality of a reception which appeared utterly inconsistent with her stern contemptuous rejection of his previous attempts to form her acquaintance; and he could not quite reconcile the beaming smile on her lip, and the sparkling radiance in her eyes, with the pallor which he saw settle swiftly upon her face when his name was first pronounced. "Ah! My son Cuthbert? Handsome young dog, and like his father, finds beauty the most powerful magnet. Where did you meet him?" "Once only, when he was introduced by our minister, who deputized him to deliver to me some custom-house regulations. "Did you meet Mrs. Laurance?" "Your wife, sir?" Annoyance instantaneously clouded his countenance, and Dr. Plymley gnawed his lower lip to hide a smile. "My son's wife. Cuthbert and I are the only survivors of my own immediate family." "If Madame had not so rigidly adhered to her recluse habits, she could scarcely have failed to learn from his brilliant campaigns in gay society that the General is unfettered by matrimonial bonds, and almost as irresistible and popular as his naughty model D'Orsay." "Madame, Plymley is a traitor, jealously stabbing my spotless reputation. I deny the indictment, and appeal to your heavenly charity, praying you to believe that I plead guilty only to the possession of a heart tenderly vulnerable to the shafts of grace and beauty."