tenderest, most generous in her nature—and there was much still, despite the accusers that could appeal against her—knew it, and did not seek to palliate it to herself. The career that closed her in, once entered, as the net closes round the bird it ensnares, had wearied her, had revolted her, had made her pride contemn the part she played, her conscience plead against the woe she worked, her nature, grand in its mould and fearless in its courage, revolt from much that she had once voluntarily sought and confessedly loved in the earlier years when it was fresh to her. And she was not happy: the simplicity of the aged recluse at Monastica had pierced to a truth that Paris, and the world, and the men, who glittered round her and adored her, did not perceive. She was not happy. With her brilliance, her power, her enterprise, the fineness of her intricate intrigues, the daring of her constant adventures, the excitement of her incessant changes, no morbid sentiment, no passive pensiveness could have hold on her or be known to her, but something deeper than this was at her heart; it was the melancholy of a mute remorse, the unavailing and vainly-silenced lament of one who finds that he has bartered his gold for stones.
Her eyes were weary in all their splendour, as
