The poor woman ended by admitting to herself that she was reduced to the aborigines.

Her eye now began to assume a certain savage expression, to which the malicious chevalier responded by a shrewd look as he drew out his snuff-box and gazed at the Princess Goritza.

Monsieur de Valois was well aware that in the feminine ethics of love fidelity to a first attachment is considered a pledge for the future.
But Mademoiselle Cormon--we must admit it--was wanting in intellect, and did not understand the snuff-box performance.

She redoubled her vigilance against "the evil spirit"; her rigid devotion and fixed principles kept her cruel sufferings hidden among the mysteries of private life.

Every evening, after the company had left her, she thought of her lost youth, her faded bloom, the hopes of thwarted nature; and, all the while immolating her passions at the feet of the Cross (like poems condemned to stay in a desk), she resolved firmly that if, by chance, any suitor presented himself, to subject him to no tests, but to accept him at once for whatever he might be.