Nothing could mitigate the Muskerry's ugliness; and no
disguise could hide Mrs. Angela's beauty."
"What would the costume be?" asked Papillon.
"Oh, something simple. A long black satin gown, and a brick-dust velvet
hat, tall and curiously twisted, like your Tudor chimney; and a cluster of
grey feathers on the top, to represent smoke."
"Monsieur le Comte makes a joke of everything. But what would father have
said if we had never been found?"
"I should have said that they are right who swear there is a curse upon all
property taken from the Church, and that the ban fell black and bitter upon
Chilton Abbey," answered his lordship's grave deep voice from the end of
the table, where he sat somewhat apart from the rest, gloomy and silent,
save when directly addressed.
Her ladyship and De Malfort had always plenty to talk about. They had the
past as well as the present for their discourse, and were always sighing
for the vanished glories of their youth--at Paris, at Fontainebleau, at St.
Germain. Nor were they restricted to the realities of the present and the
memories of the past; they had that wider world of unreality in which to
circulate; they had the Scudery language at the tips of their tongues,
the fantastic sentimentalism of that marvellous old maid who invented the
seventeenth-century hero and heroine; or who crystallised the vanishing
figures of that brilliant age and made them immortal.
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