three marks of
race. The youth's dark hair was neatly parted and hung in curls, forming
a sort of dark frame around his face; such was the fashion of the day.
Gloves of gray kid, matching the hat, well displayed the form of a
slender and elegant hand; whilst his boots, similar in color to the hat
and gloves, confined feet small as those of a boy twelve years old.

"Come," murmured Athos, "if she is not proud of him, she must be hard to
please."

It was three o'clock in the afternoon. The two travelers proceeded to
the Rue Saint Dominique and stopped at the door of a magnificent hotel,
surmounted with the arms of De Luynes.

"'Tis here," said Athos.

He entered the hotel and ascended the front steps, and addressing a
footman who waited there in a grand livery, asked if the Duchess de
Chevreuse was visible and if she could receive the Comte de la Fere?

The servant returned with a message to say, that, though the duchess had
not the honor of knowing Monsieur de la Fere, she would receive him.

Athos followed the footman, who led him through a long succession of
apartments and paused at length before a closed door. Athos made a sign
to the Vicomte de Bragelonne to remain where he was.

The footman opened the door and announced Monsieur le Comte de la Fere.

Madame de Chevreuse, whose name appears so often in our story "The Three
Musketeers," without her actually having appeared in any scene, was
still a beautiful woman. Although about forty-four or forty-five years
old, she might have passed for thirty-five. She still had her rich
fair hair; her large, animated, intelligent eyes, so often opened by
intrigue, so often closed by the blindness of love. She had still her
nymph-like form, so that when her back was turned she still was not
unlike the girl who had jumped, with Anne of Austria, over the moat
of the Tuileries in 1563. In all other respects she was the same mad
creature who threw over her amours such an air of originality as to make
them proverbial for eccentricity in her family.

She was in a little boudoir, hung with blue damask, adorned by red
flowers, with a foliage of gold, looking upon a garden; and reclined
upon a sofa, her head supported on the rich tapestry which covered it.
She held a book in her hand and her arm was supported by a cushion.

At the footman's announcement she raised herself a little and peeped
out, with some curiosity.

Athos appeared.

He was dressed in violet-tinted velvet,