“Glorious.”
“Celestial!”
Such were the exclamations murmured through the room, in low but earnest tones.
“So fair and dark a creature I have never seen,” said the French ambassador.
“The rarest and finest features of the blonde and the brunette combined; look at her hair and brow! It is as if the purple lustre of Italia’s vines lay upon the snow of Switzerland’s Alps,” said a young English gentleman, of some twenty years of age, and from whom the air of the university had scarcely fallen.
“You are too enthusiastic, Lord William,” gravely observed an elderly man, in the dress of a clergyman of the Church of England.
“Too enthusiastic, sir! Ah, now! do but see for yourself, if it be not profane to gaze at her. Is she not now—what is she? Queenly? Pshaw! I was, when a boy, at Versailles with my father; I saw Marie Antoinette and the beautiful princesses of her train; but never, no, never, have I seen beauty and dignity and grace like this. You have the honor of knowing the lady, sir?” he concluded, turning abruptly to a member of the French legation, standing near him.
“Oh, yes, monsieur, I have that distinction,” said the affable Parisian, with a bow and smile.
“And her name is——”
“Ah, pardon me, monsieur—Mademoiselle Marguerite De Lancie.”