Mr. Selby; and when,
at his death, Isaura, in the innocent age between childhood and youth,
had been left the most sorrowful and most lonely creature on the face of
the earth, this famous woman, worshipped by the rich for her intellect,
adored by the poor for her beneficence, came to the orphan's friendless
side, breathing love once more into her pining heart, and waking for
the first time the desires of genius, the aspirations of art, in the dim
self-consciousness of a soul between sleep and waking.

But, my dear Englishman, put yourself in Graham's place, and suppose
that you were beginning to fall in love with a girl whom for many good
reasons you ought not to marry; suppose that in the same hour in which
you were angrily conscious of jealousy on account of a man whom it
wounds your self-esteem to consider a rival, the girl tells you that
her dearest friend is a woman who is famed for her hostility to the
institution of marriage!

CHAPTER IV.

On the same day in which Graham dined with the Savarins, M. Louvier
assembled round his table the elite of the young Parisians who
constituted the oligarchy of fashion, to meet whom he had invited his
new friend the Marquis de Rochebriant. Most of them belonged to the
Legitimist party, the noblesse of the faubourg; those who did not,
belonged to no political party at all,--indifferent to the cares of
mortal States as the gods of Epicurus. Foremost among this Jeunesse
doree were Alain's kinsmen, Raoul and Enguerrand de Vandemar. To these
Louvier introduced him with a burly parental bonhomie, as if he were the
head of the family. "I need not bid you, young folks, to make
friends with each other. A Vandemar and a Rochebriant are not made
friends,--they are born friends." So saying he turned to his other
guests.

Almost in an instant Alain felt his constraint melt away in the cordial
warmth with which his cousins greeted him. These young men had a
striking family likeness to each other, and yet in feature, colouring,
and expression, in all save that strange family likeness, they were
contrasts. Raoul was tall, and, though inclined to be slender, with
sufficient breadth of shoulder to indicate no inconsiderable strength of
frame. His hair worn short and his silky beard worn long were dark;
so were his eyes, shaded by curved drooping lashes; his complexion was
pale, but clear and healthful. In repose the expression of his face
was that of a somewhat melancholy indolence, b