But he was determined not to give way, and was insensible to the blandishments of his guest, who may have been tormented by painful misgivings as he looked from his prison-like rooms at a gloomy tower in which Charles the Simple had been confined, and, it was said, murdered by a rebellious vassal.

They were hopeful, pitiful; the flatterers and fawners were at their old work again, and Pleasure, with her siren face, smiled blandishments on him.

But Philippe resists her blandishments with melancholy austerity, and when the curtain falls on the second act, things seem to be perfectly safe and in order.

Wise Flora, whenever she alluded to their holding of the plighted ones apart, named the scheme his till that cloyed, and then "ours" in a way that made it more richly his, even whenclearly to Madame, dimly to him, exasperatingly to bothher wiles for its successwoven around his cousinbecame purely feminine blandishments for purely feminine ends.