Claire Marie went off upon these errands, the former of which she proceeded to execute by calling over the stair-rails to her father below--though she was careful not to do so in a tone that could by any possibility be heard outside the house. After which, and also after having received from her parent below the answer that he knew Monsieur Louis was coming as well as, if not better than, any one else in the house, she made her way to a flight above that on which she stood, and, going to the end of the passage, rapped on the door of the last room. Being bidden to enter, the girl did so, and, pushing open the door, found the occupant of that room, a young woman, engaged in arranging her hair in front of a very small glass. "Madame," Claire Marie said, "all the company are below excepting Monsieur Louis, and he is looked for at once. The Capitaine La Truaumont has bidden me summon you and my father." "I am making ready to descend," the other answered. "I shall be there ere long." And, she added to herself, after Claire Marie had closed the door and departed, "a fair object I shall appear in his eyes when I do so!" While, as she muttered this, she sighed. If, however, these reflections were made on her personal appearance, the woman either did not know herself or misjudged herself. For, although she was not beautiful as beauty is reckoned, she had charms that might well be considered the equals of beauty. Her hair, that now she was endeavouring to arrange into the fashion of the day--the fashion that Van Dyck and, later, Kneller depicted--was a lustrous dark auburn; her eyes were dark grey fringed with long black lashes: her mouth, with its short upper lip and full, pouting, lower one, was perfect, especially when she smiled and showed her small white teeth. Her figure, too, was as near perfection as might be. But, with these charms, there was mingled that which went far to detract very seriously from them, namely, a worn, weary look, a pallor that was hardly ever absent from her face, a lack of colour that spoke either of bodily ailment or mental trouble. Gazing round the melancholy room in which this woman sheltered--"harboured" is a more fitting word--an observer might well have thought that the hardness of her life, a hardness in which, to the sordidness of the apartment was, perhaps, added sometimes the want of food or ordinary necessaries, explained that pallor. Yet, still, in speaking to this woman, in hearing the tone of melancholy in which she answered, in gazing into those dark grey eyes and observing the sadness of their glance, an observer, a listener, would have been disposed to think that the first supposition was wrong and that not bodily, but mental, trouble was the cause of her careworn appearance.