Lenore stood motionless, suddenly putting on a little dress of dignity, and looking steadfastly into the dark face of the other girl. Alixe, anything but laughing now, was absorbing, detail by detail, the delicate and exquisite personality of Gerault’s bride. More fairy-like than human she seemed, with her slender, beautifully curved child’s figure, her face neither white nor pink, but of a transparent, pearly tint indescribably ethereal, in which were set great eyes of violet hue, and all around which floated her hair,—that wonderful hair that was, indeed, a captive sun-ray. The curve of Lenore’s lips, the turn of her nostril, the poise of her head, and the delicacy of her hands and feet, all proclaimed her noble birth. The dress that she wore set off her beauty as pure gold makes a gem more brilliant. She wore a loosely fitting bliault of greenish blue, embroidered in long, silver vines, while her undersleeves and yoke were of frosty cloth of silver. Her head was crowned with a simple circlet of gold, far less lustrous than her hair; and from it, at the back, fell a veil of silver tissue that touched the hem of her robe. All this dress was disordered and dusty with long riding; but the carelessness of it seemed to become her the better. In the rich heat of the July sun she had seemed a little too colorless, a little too pale and misty, for beauty; but here, in the cool shadows of the great stone hall, she was brighter than any angel. Alixe examined her long and carefully, to the confusion of the girl, whose feeling of strangeness and embarrassment continually increased. In the face of “La Rieuse” it was easy to read the struggle between jealousy and admiration. Alixe was, secretly, a worshipper of beauty; and beauty such as this of Lenore’s she had never seen before. In the end it triumphed. Alixe’s eyes grew brighter and brighter as she gazed; and presently, when the strain of silence was not much longer to be endured, there burst from her the involuntary exclamation,— “God of dreams! How art thou fair!” And from that moment the allegiance of Alixe was fixed. She was on her knees to Lenore, this fair usurper of her place, this Gerault’s bride.