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221 For, if I were half in love with the duchess, which I by no means admit, modesty shall not blind me from holding that the duchess was as good a half in love with me. Yet, when I had been married to Marie Delhasse some six months, I received a letter from my good friend Gustave de Berensac, informing me of his approaching union with Mme. de Saint-Maclou. And, if I might judge from Gustave’s letter, he repudiated utterly the idea which I have ventured to suggest concerning the duchess.

Two other facts Gustave mentioned—both of them, I think, with a touch of apology. The first was that the duchess, being unable to endure the horrible associations now indissolubly connected with the Cardinal’s Necklace, of which she had become owner for the term of her life

“What? Won’t she wear it?” asked my wife at this point: she was (as wives will) leaning over my shoulder as I read the letter.

It was what I also had expected to read; but what I did read was that the duchess, ingeniously contriving to save both her feelings and her diamonds, had caused the stones to be set in a tiara—“which,” continued Gustave (I am sure he was much in love) “will not have any of the unpleasant associations connected with the necklace.”

And the second fact? It was this—just this, though it was wrapped up in all the roundabout phrases and softened by all the polite expressions of friendship of which Gustave was