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‘Do you know Madame de Brives?’ Effie asked of Raymond, while they were waiting for her to come in.

She came in at that moment, and the girl turned away quickly without an answer.

‘How in the world should I know her?’ That was the answer he would have been tempted to give. He felt very much out of Cousin Maria’s circle. The foreign gentleman fingered his moustache and looked at him sidewise. The Marquise was a very pretty woman, fair and slender, of middle age, with a smile, a complexion, a diamond necklace, of great splendour, and a charming manner. Her greeting to her friends was sweet and familiar, and was accompanied with much kissing, of a sisterly, motherly, daughterly kind; and yet with this expression of simple, almost homely sentiment there was something in her that astonished and dazzled. She might very well have been, as the foreign young man said, the most distinguished woman in France. Dora had not rushed forward to meet her with nearly so much empressement as Effie, and this gave him a chance to ask the former who she was. The girl replied that she was her mother’s most intimate friend: to which he rejoined that that was not a description; what he wanted to know was her title to this exalted position.

‘Why, can’t you see it? She is beautiful and she is good.’

‘I see that she is beautiful; but how can I see that she is good?’

‘Good to mamma, I mean, and to Effie and Tishy.’

‘And isn’t she good to you?’

‘Oh, I don’t know her so well. But I delight to look at her.’

‘Certainly, that must be a great pleasure,’ said Raymond. He enjoyed it during dinner, which was now served, though his enjoyment was diminished by his not finding himself next to Dora. They sat at a small round table and he had at his right his Cousin Maria, whom he had taken in. On his left was Madame de Brives, who had the foreign gentleman for a neighbour. Then came Effie and Mademoiselle Bourde, and Dora was on the other side of her mother. Raymond regarded this as marked–a symbol of the fact that Cousin Maria would continue to separate them. He remained in ignorance of the other gentleman’s identity, and remembered how he had prophesied at the hotel in New York that his hostess would give up introducing people. It was a friendly, easy little family repast, as she had said it would be, with just a marquise and a secretary of embassy–Raymond ended by guessing that the stranger was a secretary of embassy–thrown in. So far from interfering with the family tone Madame de Brives directly contributed to it. She eminently justified the affection in which she was held in the house; she was in the highest degree sociable and sympathetic, and at the same time witty (there was no insipidity in Madame de Brives), and was the cause of Raymond’s making the reflection–as he had made it often in his earlier years–that an agreeable Frenchwoman is a triumph of civilisation. This did not prevent him from giving the Marquise no more than half of his attention; the rest was dedicated to Dora, who, on her side, though in common with Effie and Mademoiselle Bourde she bent a frequent, interested gaze on the splendid French lady, very often met our young man’s eyes with mute, vague but, to his sense, none the less valuable intimations. It was as if she knew what was going on in his mind (it is true that he scarcely knew it himself), and might be trusted to clear things up at some convenient hour.

Madame de Brives talked across Raymond, in excellent English, to Cousin Maria, but this did not prevent her from being gracious, even encouraging, to the young man, who was a little afraid of her and thought her a delightful creature. She asked him more questions about himself than any of them had done. Her conversation with Mrs. Temperly was of an intimate, domestic order, and full of social, personal allusions, which Raymond was unable to follow. It appeared to be concerned considerably with the private affairs of the old French noblesse, into whose councils–to judge by the tone of the Marquise–Cousin Maria had been admitted by acclamation. Every now and then Madame de Brives broke into French, and it was in this tongue that she uttered an apostrophe to her hostess: ‘Oh, you, ma toute-bonne, you who have the genius of good sense!’ And she appealed to Raymond to know if his Cousin Maria had not the genius of good sense–the wisdom of the ages. The old lady did not defend herself from the compliment; she let it pass, with her motherly, tolerant smile; nor did Raymond attempt to defend her, for he felt the justice of his neighbour’s description: Cousin Maria’s good sense was incontestable, magnificent. She took an affectionate, indulgent view of most of the persons mentioned, and yet her tone was far from being vapid or vague. Madame de Brives usually remarked that they were coming very soon again to see her, she did them so much good. ‘The freshness of your judgment–the freshness of your judgment!’ she repeated, with a kind of glee, and she narrated that Eleonore (a personage unknown to Raymond) had said that she was a woman of Plutarch. Mrs. Temperly talked a great deal about the health of their friends; she seemed to keep the record of the influenzas and neuralgias of a numerous and susceptible circle. He did not find it in him quite to agree–the Marquise dropping the statement into his ear at a moment when their hostess was making some inquiry of Mademoiselle Bourde–that she was a nature absolutely marvellous; but he could easily see that to world-worn Parisians her quiet charities of speech and manner, with something quaint and rustic in their form, might be restorative and salutary. She allowed for everything, yet she was so good, and indeed Madame de Brives summed this up before they left the table in saying to her, ‘Oh, you, my dear, your success, more than any other that has ever taken place, has been a succes de bonte! Raymond was greatly amused at this idea of Cousin Maria’s succes de bonte: it seemed to him delightfully Parisian.