udemont? I assure you that
I have seldom seen him so alive to the fascination of female beauty!"

"Oh!" said Camilla, with her silver laugh, "your nation spoils us
for our own countrymen. You forget how little we are accustomed to
flattery."

"Flattery! what truth could flatter on the lips of an exile? But you
don't answer my question--what think you of Vaudemont? Few are more
admired. He is handsome!"

"Is he?" said Camilla, and she glanced at Vaudemont, as he stood at a
little distance, thoughtful and abstracted. Every girl forms to herself
some untold dream of that which she considers fairest. And Vaudemont had
not the delicate and faultless beauty of Sidney. There was nothing that
corresponded to her ideal in his marked features and lordly shape! But
she owned, reluctantly to herself, that she had seldom seen, among the
trim gallants of everyday life, a form so striking and impressive. The
air, indeed, was professional--the most careless glance could detect the
soldier. But it seemed the soldier of an elder age or a wilder clime. He
recalled to her those heads which she had seen in the Beaufort Gallery
and other Collections yet more celebrated--portraits by Titian of those
warrior statesman who lived in the old Republics of Italy in a perpetual
struggle with their kind--images of dark, resolute, earnest men.
Even whatever was intellectual in his countenance spoke, as in those
portraits, of a mind sharpened rather in active than in studious
life;--intellectual, not from the pale hues, the worn exhaustion, and
the sunken cheek of the bookman and dreamer, but from its collected and
stern repose, the calm depth that lay beneath the fire of the eyes, and
the strong will that spoke in the close full lips, and the high but not
cloudless forehead.

And, as she gazed, Vaudemont turned round--her eyes fell beneath his,
and she felt angry with herself that she blushed. Vaudemont saw the
downcast eye, he saw the blush, and the attraction of Camilla's presence
was restored. He would have approached her, but at that moment Mr.
Beaufort himself entered, and his thoughts went again into a darker
channel.

"Yes," said Liancourt, "you must allow Vaudemont looks what he is--a
noble fellow and a gallant soldier. Did you never hear of his battle
with the tigress? It made a noise in India. I must tell it you as I have
heard it."

And while Laincourt was narrating the adventure, whatever it was, to
which he referred, the card-tabl