"The duchess of what?" I asked patiently.

"You will have heard of her," he said, with a proud smile. Evidently he
thought that the lady was a trump card. "The Duchess of Saint-Maclou."

I laid down my cigar, maintaining, however, a calm demeanor.

"Aha!" said Gustave. "You will come, my friend?"

I could not deny that Gustave had a right to his little triumph; for a
year ago, when the duchess had visited England with her husband, I had
received an invitation to meet her at the Embassy. Unhappily, the death of
a relative (whom I had never seen) occurring the day before, I had been
obliged to post off to Ireland, and pay proper respect by appearing at the
funeral. When I returned the duchess had 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