"Thou art a silly girl, Pauline," continued her mother, "and take these trifles far too much to heart. Perhaps I was wrong concerning this same picture. It was but a random guess. Besides, even were it true, where were the mighty harm? These men are all alike, Pauline--Like butterflies, they rest on a thousand flowers before they settle on any one. We all fancy that our own lover is different from his fellows; but, believe me, my child, the best happiness a woman can boast, is that of being most carefully deceived." "Then no such butterfly love for me, Mamma," replied Pauline, her cheek slightly colouring as she spoke. "I would rather not know this sweet poison--love. My heart is still free, though my fancy may have--have--" "May have what, Pauline?" demanded her mother, with a doubtful smile. "My dear child, thy heart, and thy fancy, I trow, have not been so separate as thou thinkest." "Nay, Mamma," answered Pauline, "my fancy, like an insect, may have been caught in the web of a spider; but the enemy has not yet seized me, and I will break through while I can." "But, first, let us be sure that we are right," said Madame de Beaumont. "For as every rule has its exception, there be some men, whose hearts are even worthy the acceptance of a squeamish girl, who, knowing nothing of the world, expects to meet with purity like her own. At all events, love, De Blenau is the soul of honour, and will not stoop to deceit. In justice, you must not judge without hearing him." "But," said Pauline, not at all displeased with the refutation of her own ideas, and even wishing, perhaps, to afford her mother occasion to combat them anew,--"but--" The sentence, however, was never destined to be concluded; for, as she spoke, the door of the apartment opened, and a form glided in, the appearance of which instantly arrested the words on Pauline's lips, and made her draw back with an instinctive feeling of respect. The lady who entered had passed that earlier period of existence when beauties and graces succeed each other without pause, like the flowers of spring, that go blooming on from the violet to the rose. She was in the summer of life, but it was the early summer, untouched by autumn; and her form, though it possessed no longer the airy lightness of youth, had acquired in dignity a degree of beauty which compensated for the softer loveliness that years had stolen away. Her brown hair fell in a profusion of large curls round a face, which, if not strictly handsome, was highly pleasing: and even many sorrows and reverses, by mingling an expression of patient melancholy with the gentle majesty of her countenance, produced a greater degree of interest than the features could have originally excited.