ed beautiful, inasmuch as her features lacked
regularity; but the extreme mobility of her countenance, upon which
could be read all the emotions of her soul, had an irresistible
seduction. Her large eyes, of velvety blue, had untold depths and
an incredible intensity of expression; the imperceptible quiver of
her rosy nostrils revealed an untamable pride; and the smile that
played upon her lips told her immense contempt for every thing mean
and small. But her real beauty was her hair,--of a blonde so
luminous that it seemed powdered with diamond-dust; so thick and
so long, that to be able to twist and confine it, she had to cut off
heavy locks of it to the very root.

Alone, in the house, she did not tremble at her father's voice. The
studied despotism which had subdued Mme. Favoral had revolted her,
and her energy had become tempered under the same system of
oppression which had unnerved Maxence.

Whilst her mother and her brother lied with that quiet impudence of
the slave, whose sole weapon is duplicity, Gilberte preserved a
sullen silence. And if complicity was imposed upon her by
circumstances, if she had to maintain a falsehood, each word cost
her such a painful effort, that her features became visibly altered.

Never, when her own interests were alone at stake, had she stooped
to an untruth. Fearlessly, and whatever might be the result,

"That is the fact," she would say.

Accordingly, M. Favoral could not help respecting her to a degree;
and, when he was in fine humor, he called her the Empress Gilberte.
For her alone he had some deference and some attentions. He
moderated, when she looked at him, the brutality of his language.
He brought her a few flowers every Saturday.

He had even allowed her a professor of music; though he was wont to
declare that a woman needs but two accomplishments,--to cook and
to sew. But she had insisted so much, that he had at last
discovered for her, in an attic of the Rue du Pas-de-la-Mule, an
old Italian master, the Signor Gismondo Pulei, a sort of unknown
genius, for whom thirty francs a month were a fortune, and who
conceived a sort of religious fanaticism for his pupil.

Though he had always refused to write a note, he consented, for her
sake, to fix the melodies that buzzed in his cracked brain; and some
of them proved to be admirable. He dreamed to compose for her an
opera that would transmit to the most remote generations the name
of Gismondo Pulei.

"The