ee ladies and a young man, they were obviously a family--a mother,
two daughters and a son; a circumstance which had the effect at once of
making each member of the group doubly typical and of helping to account
for their fine taciturnity. They were not, with each other, on terms of
ceremony, and also were probably fatigued with their course among the
pictures, the rooms on the upper floor. Their attitude, on the part of
visitors who had superior features even if they might appear to some
passers-by to have neglected a fine opportunity for completing these
features with an expression, was after all a kind of tribute to the
state of exhaustion, of bewilderment, to which the genius of France is
still capable of reducing the proud.

"En v'la des abrutis!" more than one of their fellow-gazers might have
been heard to exclaim; and certain it is that there was something
depressed and discouraged in this interesting group, who sat looking
vaguely before them, not noticing the life of the place, somewhat as if
each had a private anxiety. It might have been finely guessed, however,
that though on many questions they were closely united this present
anxiety was not the same for each. If they looked grave, moreover, this
was doubtless partly the result of their all being dressed in such
mourning as told of a recent bereavement. The eldest of the three ladies
had indeed a face of a fine austere mould which would have been moved to
gaiety only by some force more insidious than any she was likely to
recognise in Paris. Cold, still, and considerably worn, it was neither
stupid nor hard--it was firm, narrow and sharp. This competent matron,
acquainted evidently with grief but not weakened by it, had a high
forehead to which the quality of the skin gave a singular polish--it
glittered even when seen at a distance; a nose which achieved a high
free curve; and a tendency to throw back her head and carry it well
above her, as if to disengage it from the possible entanglements of the
rest of her person. If you had seen her walk you would have felt her to
tread the earth after a fashion suggesting that in a world where she had
long since discovered that one couldn't have one's own way one could
never tell what annoying aggression might take place, so that it was
well, from hour to hour, to save what one could. Lady Agnes saved her
head, her white triangular forehead, over which her close-crinkled
flaxen hair, reproduced in different shades in