Their attitude and their youth did make them appear sentimental; but they were not really so. He was only telling her what a shock she had been to those Parisians the day before. "I understand, now, the regard of Madame Choudey and her pretty, prim niece, Sidonie. They will never forgive me." "You, Madame!" "Me, Monsieur. Their fondness will preclude resentment towards you, but against myself they will feel a grievance that I am not as they pictured me. Come; you must tell Maman." The dowager nodded as one who understood it all. "They will not forget you, that is sure," she said, smiling; but the girl--for she was only a girl, despite the Madame--shrugged her shoulders. "Myself, I care little for their remembrance," she replied, indifferently; "they were only curious, not interested, I could see." "You put my picture in the shadow at all events," protested Dumaresque, pointing to a large canvas hung opposite; "my picture over which art lovers raved until you appeared as a rival." "How extravagant you are, Monsieur Dumaresque, a true Gascon! To think of rivaling that!" As she faced the canvas the dowager watched her critically, and nodded her approval to Dumaresque, who smiled and acquiesced. Evidently they were both well satisfied with the living picture of the salon. The new Marquise de Caron had lived, probably, twenty years. She was of medium height, with straight, dark brows, and dark, long-lashed eyes. The eyes had none of the shyness that was deemed a necessity to beauty in that era of balloon skirts and scuttle bonnets under which beauty of the conventional order hid. But that she was not conventional was shown by the turban of grey resting on her waved, dark hair, while the veil falling from it and mingling with the folds of her dress, suggested the very artistic draperies of the nuns. Not a particle of color was in her apparel, and but little in her face; only the lips had that thread of scarlet sung of by Solomon, and the corners of them curved upwards a trifle as she surveyed the canvas. The turban was loosened and held in her hands as she stood there looking. The picture evidently attracted her, though it did not please. At last she turned to the artist. "Why do you paint pictures like that?" "Like that? Pouf! You mean beautiful?" "No, it is not beautiful," she said, thoughtfully, as she seated herself on the dais by the dowager's couch. "To be truly beautiful a thing must impress one with a sense of fitness to our highest perceptive faculties. A soulless thing is never beautiful." "What then, of dogs, horses, lions, the many art works in metal or on canvas?" "You must not raise that wall against her words, Loris, unless you wish to quarrel," said the dowager in friendly warning. "Judithe is pantheist enough to fancy that animals have souls."