Miss Bretherton | Page 6

the main bulk was French, while the side-wings, so to speak, had that tempting miscellaneous air--here a patch of German, there an island of Italian; on this side rows of English poets, on the other an abundance of novels of all languages--which delights the fond heart of the book-lover. The pictures were mostly autotypes and photographs from subjects of Italian art, except in one corner, where a fine little collection of French historical engravings completely covered the wall, and drew a visitor's attention by the brilliancy of their black and white. On the writing-table were piles of paper-covered French books, representing for the most part the palmy days of the Romantics, though every here and there were intervening strata of naturalism, balanced in their turn by recurrent volumes of Sainte-Beuve. The whole had a studious air. The books were evidently collected with a purpose, and the piles of orderly MSS. lying on the writing-table seemed to sum up and explain their surroundings.
The only personal ornament of the room was a group of photographs on the mantelpiece. Two were faded and brown, and represented Kendal's parents, both of whom had been dead some years. The other was a large cabinet photograph of a woman no longer very young--a striking-looking woman, with a fine worn face and a general air of distinction and character. There was a strong resemblance between her features and those of Eustace Kendal, and she was indeed his elder and only sister, the wife of a French senator, and her brother's chief friend and counsellor. Madame de Chateauvieux was a very noticeable person, and her influence over Eustace had been strong ever since their childish days. She was a woman who would have justified a repetition in the present day of Sismondi's enthusiastic estimate of the women of the First Empire. She had that m��lange du meilleur ton, 'with the purest elegance of manner, and a store of varied information, with vivacity of impression and delicacy of feeling, which,' as he declared to Madame d'Albany, 'belongs only to your sex, and is found in its perfection only in the best society of France.'
In the days when she and Eustace had been the only children of a distinguished and wealthy father, a politician of some fame, and son-in-law to the Tory premier of his young days, she had always led and influenced her brother. He followed her admiringly through her London seasons, watching the impression she made, triumphing in her triumphs, and at home discussing every new book with her and sharing, at least in his college vacations, the secretary's work for their father, which she did excellently, and with a quick, keen, political sense which Eustace had never seen in any other woman. She was handsome in her own refined and delicate way, especially at night, when the sparkle of her white neck and arms and the added brightness of her dress gave her the accent and colour she was somewhat lacking in at other times. Naturally, she was in no want of suitors, for she was rich and her father was influential, but she said 'No' many times, and was nearly thirty before M. de Chateauvieux, the first secretary of the French Embassy, persuaded her to marry him. Since then she had filled an effective place in Parisian society. Her husband had abandoned diplomacy for politics, in which his general tendencies were Orleanist, while in literature he was well known as a constant contributor to the Revue des Deux Mondes. He and his wife maintained an interesting, and in its way influential, salon, which provided a meeting ground for the best English and French society, and showed off at once the delicate quality of Madame de Chateauvieux's intelligence and the force and kindliness of her womanly tact.
Shortly after her marriage the father and mother died, within eighteen months of each other, and Eustace found his lot in life radically changed. He had been his father's secretary after leaving college, which prevented his making any serious efforts to succeed at the bar, and in consequence his interest, both of head and heart, had been more concentrated than is often the case with a young man within the walls of his home. He had admired his father sincerely, and the worth of his mother's loquacious and sometimes meddlesome tenderness he never realised fully till he had lost it. When he was finally alone, it became necessary for him to choose a line in life. His sister and he divided his father's money between them, and Eustace found himself with a fortune such as in the eyes of most of his friends constituted a leading of Providence towards two things--marriage and a seat in Parliament. However, fortunately, his sister, the only person to whom he applied for advice, was in