The duchess understood the reproach, and, bowing her head, she felt all the weight of her shame. The lesson was terrible. By degrees, however, a haughty indignation succeeded to the cruel anxiety which hadcontracted the features of Madame de Lucenay. The inexcusable faults of this lady were at least palliated by the sincerity and disinterestedness of her love, by the boldness of her devotion and the boundlessness of her generosity, by the frankness of her character, and by her inexorable aversion from all that was contemptible and base.
Still too young, too handsome, too recherché, to feel the humiliation of having been merely made a tool of, when once the feeling of love was suddenly crushed within her, this haughty and decided woman felt no longer hatred or anger, but instantaneously, a
