“Will she go to Hadley?”
“Yes—wholly against my advice. I don't trust Prince d'Alchingen.”
“She is in the library now. I will ask her to come down.”
Pensée left the room, and Sara paced the floor till she returned.
“She is coming,” said Pensée, “be nice to her—for Robert's sake!”
Sara nodded, and both women watched the door till the handle moved, and Mrs. Parflete entered.
She was dressed in violet silk without ornaments or jewels of any description. Her face was slightly flushed, and the colour intensified the pale gold diadem of her blonde hair. The expression—sweet-tempered, yet a little arrogant—of her countenance and its long oval form bore a striking resemblance to the early portraits of Marie Antoinette. Her under-lip had also a slight outward bend, which seemed an encouragement when she smiled, and contemptuous when she frowned. Her figure—though too slight even for a girl of seventeen—was extraordinarily graceful, and, in spite of her height, she was so well proportioned that she did not appear too tall. Youth showed itself, however, in a certain childlikeness of demeanour—a mixture of timidity, confidence, embarrassment, and, if one looked in her face for any sign of the emotions she had experienced, or the scenes in which she had played no feeble part, one sought in vain. Gaiety covered the melancholy, almost sombre depths in her character. And it was the gaiety of her French mother—petulant, reckless, irresistible, giddy, uncertain. As a child, dressed up in ribbons and lace, with flowers in her hair, she had been the chief amusement and plaything of Madame Duboc—to be held on her lap, perched upon the piano, placed on high cushions in the carriage, and lifted on the table of the drawing-room, where she entertained a brilliant, if dissipated company, by her talk, her little songs, her laughter, her mimicry, and her dancing. She rarely danced now, yet all the seductive arts of perfect dancing seemed hers by right of birth. Each movement, each gesture had a peculiar charm, and her dark blue eyes, the more provocative for their lack of passion, were full of a half-mocking, half-tender vivacity. Sara, a beautiful young woman herself, surveyed this unconscious rival and recognised, with good sense, a fatal attractiveness which was stronger than time and far above beauty. It was the spell of a spirit and body planned for fascination and excelling in this indefinable power. Had she been born to ruin men? thought Sara. Had she been given a glamour and certain gifts merely to perplex, deceive, and destroy all those who came within the magic of her glance? History had its long, terrible catalogue of such women whose words are now forgotten, whose portraits leave us cold, yet whose very names still agitate the heart and fire the imagination. Was Brigit one of these?
She had nothing of the deliberate coquette who, eager to please, keeps up an incessant battery of airs and graces. Her enchantments depended rather on the fact that she neither asked for admiration nor valued it. Free from vanity, and therefore indifferent to criticism, the bitternesses which destroy the peace of most women never entered her mind. The man she had chosen gave her no cause for jealousy, and, while she enjoyed men's society, she had been so accustomed to it from her earliest days that she had nothing to fear from the novelty of their friendship, or the danger of their compliments. Not prudish, not morbid, not envious, not sentimental, and not indolent, she was perhaps especially endowed for the tantalising career which the stage offers to the ambitious of both sexes. Acting came to her as music comes to the true musician. She never considered whether she would become a great actress or a rejected one: the art in itself was her delight, and she found more happiness in reciting Molière and Shakespeare alone in her own room than she ever received, even at the height of her fame, from her triumphs before the world. There was, no doubt, a great craving in her nature for innocent pleasures and excitement. She loved gay scenes, bright lights, beautiful clothes, lively music, witty conversation. She had been born for the brilliant Courts of the eighteenth century when life in each class was more highly concentrated than is possible now—when love was put to severer tests, hatred permitted a crueller play, politics asked a more intricate genius, and art controlled the kingdom of the Graces.