Miss Bretherton | Page 6

of one of
Wren's churches, as dainty, as perfect, and as fastidiously balanced as
the hand of man could leave it.
Inside, the room was such as fitted a studious bachelor of means. The
book-cases on the walls held old college classics and law-books
underneath, and above a miscellaneous literary library, of which 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 Châteauvieux 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 mélange 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 Châteauvieux, 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 Châteauvieux'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