But if Cecil's face was not faultless, her figure _was_. Had one single proportion been exaggerated or deficient, she could never have carried off her height so lithely and gracefully. She might take twenty _poses_ in a morning, and people always thought they would choose the last one to have her painted in. Here, she was quite inimitable. For instance, women, I believe, used to practice in their own room for hours to catch her peculiar way of half-reclining in an arm-chair; but the most painstaking of them all never achieved any thing beyond a caricature. Yet no one could accuse her of studying stage-effects. If a trifle of the _Incedo Regina_ marked her walk and carriage, it was a l'Eugenie, not a la Statira. Indeed, she was thoroughly natural all over; cleverer and more fascinating, certainly, than ninety-nine women out of every hundred; but not one bit more strong-minded, or heroic, or self-denying. She had been very well brought up, and had undeniably good principles; but she would yield to occasional small temptations with perfect grace and facility. Great ones she had never yet encountered; for Cecil, if not quite fancy-free, had only read and perhaps dreamed of passions. She had known one remorse, of which you may hear hereafter (not a heavy allowance, considering her opportunities), and one grief--the death of her mother. She entertained a remarkable reverence for all ministers of the Established Church; yet she was about the last woman alive to have married a clergyman, and would have considered the charge of the old women and schools of a country parish as a lingering and unsatisfactory martyrdom. There never was a more constant attendant at all sorts of divine service; though perhaps the most casual of worshipers had never been more bored than she was by some of the discourses to which she listened so patiently. She would confess this to you at luncheon, and then start for the same church in the afternoon, with an edifying but rather comic expression of resignation. I am sure she would not deliberately have vexed the smallest child; and yet the number of athletic men who ascribed the loss of their peace of mind to her, was, as the Yankees have it, "a caution." Some of the "regulars," wary adventuresses of three seasons' standing, had brought off several pretty good things by following her, and picking up the victims fluttering about helpless in their first despair, just as the keepers after a battue go round the covers with the retrievers. If there were any more antitheses in her character, they had better speak for themselves hereafter; nor is there much that need be told about her companions.