“Thou seest the card that falls—she knows
The card that followeth;
Her game in thy tongue is called Life,
As ebbs thy daily breath;
When she shall speak, thou’lt learn her tongue,
And know she calls it Death.”
—D. G. Rossetti, The Card-dealer.
No woman like Madame d’Espaze, with her notoriety, her lovers, her political intriguery, her secret power (how great, a matter for speculation), had ever crossed Gilbert’s path in life. He had time this morning, as he threaded the streets, to make some picture of her to himself. Two types of beauty presented themselves to his imagination; the one dark, voluptuous, imperious, a sort of empress of vice, the other of that fair and child-like mould which rules by cajolery. At the door of the Comtesse’s salon he was still speculating which class would claim her, for his success might depend upon it.
But she belonged to neither. The Marquis beheld, on a small sofa covered with yellow damask, a woman—a girl almost—wearing a simple virginal gown of light Indian muslin, made after the new mode. She rose as Château-Foix was announced, and he was struck with her grace, her height, and the grave, nunlike style of her beauty. Here were no meretricious enhancements; she was not painted, and her beautiful brown hair, gathered simply into a knot, was innocent of powder or of any sort of adornment. The trailing folds of white fell from breast to foot. Gilbert was taken aback, he scarcely knew why. The Comtesse threw him a look of calm enquiry out of her long placid eyes, ere she responded to his bow.
“You have come to see me on business, Monsieur, I understand,” she said, as she rose from her curtsy. “I regret that I could not receive you last night. Be seated, I pray.”