At the time whereof I
write it is not possible that she could be less than forty-six, and yet her
figure was slender and shapely and still endowed with the grace of
girlhood; her face delicate of tint, and little marked by time--or even by
the sufferings to which, in the late king's reign, Cardinal de Richelieu
had subjected her; her eyes were blue and peaceful as a summer sky; her
hair was the colour of ripe corn. He would be a hardy guesser who set her
age at so much as thirty.
My appearance she greeted by letting fall her book, and lifting up her
hands--the loveliest in France--she uttered a little cry of surprise.
"Is it really you, Gaston?" she asked.
Albeit it was growing wearisome to be thus greeted by all to whom I showed
myself, yet I studied courtesy in my reply, and then, 'neath the suasion of
her kindliness, I related all that had befallen me since first I had
journeyed to Blois, in Andrea de Mancini's company, withholding, however,
all allusions to my feelings towards Yvonne. Why betray them when they
were doomed to be stifled in the breast that begat them? But Madame de
Chevreuse had not been born a woman and lived six and forty years to no
purpose.
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