nderella of the house, the domestic
drudge, the one for whom there was no career, as it was useless for the
Marquise to take up her case. He was ashamed of this fancy, I say, and
yet it came back to him; he was even surprised that it had not occurred
to him before. Her sisters were neither ugly nor proud (Tishy, indeed,
was almost touchingly delicate and timid, with exceedingly pretty
points, yet with a little appealing, old-womanish look, as if,
small--very small--as she was, she was afraid she shouldn't grow any
more); but her mother, like the mother in the fairy-tale, was a _femme
forte_. Madame de Brives could do nothing for Dora, not absolutely
because she was too plain, but because she would never lend herself, and
that came to the same thing. Her mother accepted her as recalcitrant,
but Cousin Maria's attitude, at the best, could only be resignation. She
would respect her child's preferences, she would never put on the screw;
but this would not make her love the child any more. So Raymond
interpreted certain signs, which at the same time he felt to be very
slight, while the conversation in Mrs. Temperly's _salon_ (this was its
preponderant tendency) rambled among questions of bric-a-brac, of where
Tishy's portrait should be placed when it was finished, and the current
prices of old Gobelins. _Ces dames_ were not in the least above the
discussion of prices.

On the 17th it was easy to see that more lamps than usual had been
lighted. They streamed through all the windows of the charming hotel and
mingled with the radiance of the carriage-lanterns, which followed each
other slowly, in couples, in a close, long rank, into the fine sonorous
court, where the high stepping of valuable horses was sharp on the
stones, and up to the ruddy portico. The night was wet, not with a
downpour, but with showers interspaced by starry patches, which only
added to the glitter of the handsome, clean Parisian surfaces. The
_sergents de ville_ were about the place, and seemed to make the
occasion important and official. These night aspects of Paris in the
_beaux quartiers_ had always for Raymond a particularly festive
association, and as he passed from his cab under the wide permanent tin
canopy, painted in stripes like an awning, which protected the low
steps, it seemed to him odder than ever that all this established
prosperity should be Cousin Maria's.

If the thought of how well she did it bore him company from the
threshold, it d