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Rh gone, and Gustave had, half-ironically, consoled my evident annoyance by telling me that he had given such a description of me to his friend that she shared my sorrow, and had left a polite message to that effect. That I was not much consoled needs no saying. That I required consolation will appear not unnatural when I say that the duchess was one of the most brilliant and well-known persons in French society; yes, and outside France also. For she was a cosmopolitan. Her father was French, her mother American; and she had passed two or three years in England before her marriage. She was very pretty, and, report said, as witty as a pretty woman need be. Once she had been rich, but the money was swallowed up by speculation; she and her father (the mother was dead) were threatened with such reduction of means as seemed to them penury; and the marriage with the duke had speedily followed—the precise degree of unwillingness on the part of Mlle. de Beville being a disputed point. Men said she was forced into the marriage, women very much doubted it; the lady herself gave no indication, and her father declared that the match was one of affection. All this I had heard from common friends; only a series of annoying accidents had prevented the more interesting means of knowledge which acquaintance with the duchess herself would have afforded.

“You have always,” said Gustave, “wanted to know her.”

I relit my cigar and puffed thoughtfully. It