The other was a large cabinet photograph of a woman no longer very young--a striking-looking woman, with a fine worn face and a general air of distinction and character.
There was a strong resemblance between her features and those of Eustace Kendal, and she was indeed his elder and only sister, the wife of a French senator, and her brother's chief friend and counsellor.

Madame de Chateauvieux was a very noticeable person, and her influence over Eustace had been strong ever since their childish days.

She was a woman who would have justified a repetition in the present day of Sismondi's enthusiastic estimate of the women of the First Empire.

She had that _melange du meilleur ton_, 'with the purest elegance of manner, and a store of varied information, with vivacity of impression and delicacy of feeling, which,' as he declared to Madame d'Albany, 'belongs only to your sex, and is found in its perfection only in the best society of France.' In the days when she and Eustace had been the only children of a distinguished and wealthy father, a politician of some fame, and son-in-law to the Tory premier of his young days, she had always led and influenced her brother.

He followed her admiringly through her London seasons, watching the impression she made, triumphing in her triumphs, and at home discussing every new book with her and sharing, at least in his college vacations, the secretary's work for their father, which she did excellently, and with a quick, keen, political sense which Eustace had never seen in any other woman.