She had nothing of the deliberate coquette who, eager to please, keeps up an incessant battery of airs and graces. Her enchantments depended rather on the fact that she neither asked for admiration nor valued it. Free from vanity, and therefore indifferent to criticism, the bitternesses which destroy the peace of most women never entered her mind. The man she had chosen gave her no cause for jealousy, and, while she enjoyed men's society, she had been so accustomed to it from her earliest days that she had nothing to fear from the novelty of their friendship, or the danger of their compliments. Not prudish, not morbid, not envious, not sentimental, and not indolent, she was perhaps especially endowed for the tantalising career which the stage offers to the ambitious of both sexes. Acting came to her as music comes to the true musician. She never considered whether she would become a great actress or a rejected one: the art in itself was her delight, and she found more happiness in reciting Molière and Shakespeare alone in her own room than she ever received, even at the height of her fame, from her triumphs before the world. There was, no doubt, a great craving in her nature for innocent pleasures and excitement. She loved gay scenes, bright lights, beautiful clothes, lively music, witty conversation. She had been born for the brilliant Courts of the eighteenth century when life in each class was more highly concentrated than is possible now--when love was put to severer tests, hatred permitted a crueller play, politics asked a more intricate genius, and art controlled the kingdom of the Graces.
The three women as they faced each other presented a remarkable picture. Pensée, the eldest, who alone knew the lessons of physical pain, had a pathetic grace which made her seem, in comparison with the others--radiant with untried health,--some gentle, plaintive spirit from a sadder sphere. Her clinging blue robe appeared too heavy for the frail body; her fair curls and carefully arranged _chignon_ were too modish for the ethereal yet anxious countenance; the massive wedding-ring seemed too coarse a bond for the almost transparent hand which trembled nervously on the cover of the _Serious Call_. Sara, in black velvet and sable, with ostrich plumes and golden beads, with flashing eyes and a gipsy's flush, with all the self-command of a woman trained for society, living for it and in it, with all the self-assurance of a woman in an unassailable position, handsome, rich, flattered, spoiled, domineering, and unscrupulous, with all the insolence of an egoism which no human force could humiliate and no human antagonist terrify, Sara seemed the one who was destined to succeed superbly in the war of life. Mrs. Parflete--whose courage, determination, and powers of endurance were concealed by a face which might have been made of lovely gauze--seemed less a being than a poetical creation: a portrait by Watteau or Fragonard stepped from its frame, animated by pure fancy, and moving, without sorrow and without labour, through a charmed existence.