VIII Set a thief to catch a thief, and a woman to unravel the character of a woman. Such was the aphorism my Lord Gore had bestowed in confidence upon Hortense when he had bequeathed Anne Purcell’s daughter to the Italian’s cleverness. If there were anything beneath that sullen and lethargic surface, Hortense would discover it, and perhaps resurrect the girl’s instinct to laugh and live. Few guests met in the painted salon that summer evening: three girls of Barbara’s age, an elderly knight with sharp, humorous eyes, a sentimental widow, and Hortense. The windows were open toward the park, where dull, rain-ladened clouds shut out the stars. A few shaded candles in sconces along the walls made a glimmering twilight in the room, and in one corner a little brazen lamp burned perfumed oil, so that the air was richly scented. A girl stood singing beside the harpsichord when Anne Purcell and her daughter entered the salon. Hortense herself was accompanying the song, while those who listened were like figures in a picture, each with a shadowy individuality of its own. There was an atmosphere of opulence and sensitive refinement about the scene. The breeze of youth had been banished and the salon made sacred to musing maturity. Hortense excelled in the art of welcoming a friend. Even the flowing lines of her figure could put forth an intoxicating graciousness that fascinated women as well as men. She suggested infinite sympathy, yet infinite shrewdness. Strangers might have mistrusted her if she had shown only the one or the other. My Lady Anne looked commonplace beside Hortense. Her smile had a crude affectation of good-will that did not completely conceal latent distrust and jealousy. The Englishwoman was there with a purpose, and a purpose is often one of the most difficult things on earth to smother. It was in the daughter that Hortense discovered a vacant unapproachableness, a callous apathy that piqued her interest. The girl was not gauche, despite her silence. It was as though her individuality refused to mingle with the individuality of others. Hortense disposed of my lady by setting her to chat with the grim old gentleman in the big periwig, whose interest in life gravitated between the latest piece of learned gossip he might pick up at the meetings of the Royal Society and the lighter, more glittering gossip of Whitehall. My lady could at least satisfy him in the lighter vein. The three girls were given a pack of cards and a table in a corner; the sentimental widow—some new book. Hortense herself drew Barbara aside toward one of the windows, as though she was the one person whom she chose to actively amuse.