The high windows of painted glass shed a paleness on her face, but her
carriage was light and assured as she advanced to the President and
knelt to receive her degree. The parchment was placed in her hand, the
furred hood laid on her shoulders; then, after another flourish of
rhetoric, she was led to the lectern from which her discourse was to be
delivered. Odo sat just below her, and as she took her place their eyes
met for an instant. He was caught up in the serene exaltation of her
look, as though she soared with him above wind and cloud to a region of
unshadowed calm; then her eyes fell and she began to speak.
She had a pretty mastery of Latin, and though she had never before
spoken in public, her poetical recitations, and the early habit of
intercourse with her father's friends, had given her a fair measure of
fluency and self-possession. These qualities were raised to eloquence by
the sweetness of her voice, and by the grave beauty which made the
academic gown seem her natural wear, rather than a travesty of learning.
Odo at first had some difficulty in fixing his attention on what she
said; and when he controlled his thoughts she was in the height of her
panegyric of constitutional liberty. She had begun slowly, almost
coldly; but now her theme possessed her. One by one she evoked the
familiar formulas with which his mind had once reverberated. They woke
no echo in him now; but he saw that she could still set them ringing
through the sensibilities of her hearers.
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