She felt somewhat too sensitively the hollowness of the great world, and had a low opinion of human nature.

In fact, she was a woman of the French memoirs--one of those charming and _spirituelles_ Aspasias of the boudoir, who interest us by their subtlety, tact, and grace, their exquisite tone of refinement, and are redeemed from the superficial and frivolous, partly by a consummate knowledge of the social system in which they move, and partly by a half-concealed and touching discontent of the trifles on which their talents and affections are wasted.

These are the women who, after a youth of false pleasure, often end by an old age of false devotion.

They are a class peculiar to those ranks and countries in which shines and saddens that gay and unhappy thing--_a woman without a home_! Now this was a specimen of life--this Valerie de Ventadour--that Maltravers had never yet contemplated, and Maltravers was perhaps equally new to the Frenchwoman.

They were delighted with each other's society, although it so happened that they never agreed.
Madame de Ventadour rode on horseback, and Maltravers was one of her usual companions.