of a woman no longer very young--a striking-looking woman,
with a fine worn face and a general air of distinction and character.
There was a strong resemblance between her features and those of Eustace
Kendal, and she was indeed his elder and only sister, the wife of a
French senator, and her brother's chief friend and counsellor. Madame de
Chateauvieux was a very noticeable person, and her influence over Eustace
had been strong ever since their childish days. She was a woman who would
have justified a repetition in the present day of Sismondi's enthusiastic
estimate of the women of the First Empire. She had that _melange du
meilleur ton_, 'with the purest elegance of manner, and a store of varied
information, with vivacity of impression and delicacy of feeling, which,'
as he declared to Madame d'Albany, 'belongs only to your sex, and is
found in its perfection only in the best society of France.'

In the days when she and Eustace had been the only children of a
distinguished and wealthy father, a politician of some fame, and
son-in-law to the Tory premier of his young days, she had always led and
influenced her brother. He followed her admiringly through her London
seasons, watching the impression she made, triumphing in her triumphs,
and at home discussing every new book with her and sharing, at least in
his college vacations, the secretary's work for their father, which she
did excellently, and with a quick, keen, political sense which Eustace
had never seen in any other woman. She was handsome in her own refined
and delicate way, especially at night, when the sparkle of her white neck
and arms and the added brightness of her dress gave her the accent and
colour she was somewhat lacking in at other times. Naturally, she was in
no want of suitors, for she was rich and her father was influential, but
she said 'No' many times, and was nearly thirty before M. de
Chateauvieux, the first secretary of the French Embassy, persuaded her to
marry him. Since then she had filled an effective place in Parisian
society. Her husband had abandoned diplomacy for politics, in which his
general tendencies were Orleanist, while in literature he was well known
as a constant contributor to the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. He and his wife
maintained an interesting, and in its way influential, _salon_, which
provided a meeting ground for the best English and French society, and
showed off at once the delicate quality of Madame de Chateauvieux's