An impassioned voice was speaking in the chill solitude; the speaker
brought with him a warm breath of youth and the charms of a carefully
cultivated mind. It was so long since Mme. de Beauseant had felt
stirred by real feeling delicately expressed, that it affected her
very strongly now. In spite of herself, she watched M. de Nueil's
expressive face, and admired the noble countenance of a soul, unbroken
as yet by the cruel discipline of the life of the world, unfretted by
continual scheming to gratify personal ambition and vanity. Gaston was
in the flower of his youth, he impressed her as a man with something
in him, unaware as yet of the great career that lay before him. So
both these two made reflections most dangerous for their peace of
mind, and both strove to conceal their thoughts. M. de Nueil saw in
the Vicomtesse a rare type of woman, always the victim of her
perfections and tenderness; her graceful beauty is the least of her
charms for those who are privileged to know the infinite of feeling
and thought and goodness in the soul within; a woman whose instinctive
feeling for beauty runs through all the most varied expressions of
love, purifying its transports, turning them to something almost holy;
wonderful secret of womanhood, the exquisite gift that Nature so
seldom bestows.
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