"It is kind of you, Angélique," replied Amélie, returning her caress warmly, but without effusion. "We have simply come with our people to assist in the King's corvée; when that is done, we shall return to Tilly. I felt sure I should meet you, and thought I should know you again easily, which I hardly do. How you are changed--for the better, I should say, since you left off conventual cap and costume!" Amélie could not but look admiringly on the beauty of the radiant girl. "How handsome you have grown! but you were always that. We both took the crown of honor together, but you would alone take the crown of beauty, Angélique." Amélie stood off a pace or two, and looked at her friend from head to foot with honest admiration, "and would deserve to wear it too," added she.
"I like to hear you say that, Amélie; I should prefer the crown of beauty to all other crowns! You half smile at that, but I must tell the truth, if you do. But you were always a truth-teller, you know, in the convent, and I was not so! Let us cease flatteries."
Angélique felt highly flattered by the praise of Amélie, whom she had sometimes condescended to envy for her graceful figure and lovely, expressive features.
"Gentlemen often speak as you do, Amélie," continued she, "but, pshaw! they cannot judge as girls do, you know. But do you really think me beautiful? and how beautiful? Compare me to some one we know."
"I can only compare you to yourself, Angélique. You are more beautiful than any one I know," Amélie burst out in frank enthusiasm.
"But, really and truly, do you think me beautiful, not only in your eyes, but in the judgment of the world?"
Angélique brushed back her glorious hair and stared fixedly in the face of her friend, as if seeking confirmation of something in her own thoughts.
"What a strange question, Angélique! Why do you ask me in that way?"
"Because," replied she with bitterness, "I begin to doubt it. I have been praised for my good looks until I grow weary of the iteration; but I believed the lying flattery once,--as what woman would not, when it is repeated every day of her life?"
Amélie looked sufficiently puzzled. "What has come over you, Angélique? Why should you doubt your own charms? or really, have you found at last a case in which they fail you?"