The men of the party remained with the duke on the terrace, except
Canalis, who respectfully made his way to the superb Eleonore. The
Duchesse de Chaulieu, seated at an embroidery-frame, was showing
Mademoiselle de Verneuil how to shade a flower.

If Modeste had run a needle through her finger when handling a
pin-cushion she could not have felt a sharper prick than she received
from the cold and haughty and contemptuous stare with which Madame de
Chaulieu favored her. For an instant she saw nothing but that one
woman, and she saw through her. To understand the depths of cruelty to
which these charming creatures, whom our passions deify, can go, we
must see women with each other. Modeste would have disarmed almost any
other than Eleonore by the perfectly stupid and involuntary admiration
which her face betrayed. Had she not known the duchess's age she would
have thought her a woman of thirty-six; but other and greater
astonishments awaited her.

The poet had run plump against a great lady's anger. Such anger is the
worst of sphinxes; the face is radiant, all the rest menacing. Kings
themselves cannot make the exquisite politeness of a mistress's cold
anger capitulate when she guards it with steel armor. Canalis tried to
cling to the steel, but his fingers slipped on the polished surface,
like his words on the heart; and the gracious face, the gracious
words, the gracious bearing of the duchess hid the steel of her wrath,
now fallen to twenty-five below zero, from all observers. The
appearance of Modeste in her sublime beauty, and dressed as well as
Diane de Maufrigneuse herself, had fired the train of gunpowder which
reflection had been laying in Eleonore's mind.

All the women had gone to the windows to see the new wonder get out of