Amélie looked sufficiently puzzled. “What has come over you, Angélique? Why should you doubt your own charms? or really, have you found at last a case in which they fail you?” Very unlikely, a man would say at first, second, or third sight of Angélique des Meloises. She was indeed a fair girl to look upon,--tall, and fashioned in nature's most voluptuous mould, perfect in the symmetry of every part, with an ease and beauty of movement not suggestive of spiritual graces, like Amélie's, but of terrestrial witcheries, like those great women of old who drew down the very gods from Olympus, and who in all ages have incited men to the noblest deeds, or tempted them to the greatest crimes. She was beautiful of that rare type of beauty which is only reproduced once or twice in a century to realize the dreams of a Titian or a Giorgione. Her complexion was clear and radiant, as of a descendant of the Sun God. Her bright hair, if its golden ripples were shaken out, would reach to her knees. Her face was worthy of immortality by the pencil of a Titian. Her dark eyes drew with a magnetism which attracted men, in spite of themselves, whithersoever she would lead them. They were never so dangerous as when, in apparent repose, they sheathed their fascination for a moment, and suddenly shot a backward glance, like a Parthian arrow, from under their long eyelashes, that left a wound to be sighed over for many a day. The spoiled and petted child of the brave, careless Renaud d'Avesne des Meloises, of an ancient family in the Nivernois, Angélique grew up a motherless girl, clever above most of her companions, conscious of superior charms, always admired and flattered, and, since she left the Convent, worshipped as the idol of the gay gallants of the city, and the despair and envy of her own sex. She was a born sovereign of men, and she felt it. It was her divine right to be preferred. She trod the earth with dainty feet, and a step aspiring as that of the fair Louise de La Vallière when she danced in the royal ballet in the forest of Fontainebleau and stole a king's heart by the flashes of her pretty feet. Angélique had been indulged by her father in every caprice, and in the gay world inhaled the incense of adulation until she regarded it as her right, and resented passionately when it was withheld. She was not by nature bad, although vain, selfish, and aspiring. Her footstool was the hearts of men, and upon it she set hard her beautiful feet, indifferent to the anguish caused by her capricious tyranny. She was cold and calculating under the warm passions of a voluptuous nature. Although many might believe they had won the favor, none felt sure they had gained the love of this fair, capricious girl. CHAPTER IV. CONFIDENCES. Angélique took the arm of Amélie in her old, familiar schoolgirl way, and led her to the sunny corner of a bastion where lay a dismounted cannon.