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162 putting in little words that inspired confidence. This was what he succeeded in making out:

She lived in Paris and gave herself only to a small number of friends, always the same. The respectability of her life was, therefore, beyond suspicion. Her parents could not complain of having that sort of daughter. They lived in the north, near Boulogne; hence, in order not to meet them or the people from her part of the country, she confined her peregrinations to the seaside resorts of Normandy. Among her friends two were particularly dear. One was a young foreigner, who lived in Paris six months of the year; but he went on sending her money during the summer. The other, though he was older, gave less; she liked him better—being a Parisian, he was clever. He was a civil servant. She would not specify the office for which he worked, but it seemed to be the department of Fine Arts. The ﬁrst of these friends imagined that she was at Grandcamp, where she had just arrived; for the civil servant she was at Honﬂeur. That complicated her correspondence a little, but it was better. Besides,