The lawyer looked at the Colonel of Cuirassiers with an expression as
much of contempt as of curiosity.

"Well," proceeded Montcornet, "she arrived, I have no doubt,
punctually at nine, the first of the company perhaps, and probably she
greatly embarrassed the Comtesse de Gondreville, who cannot put two
ideas together. Repulsed by the mistress of the house, routed from
chair to chair by each newcomer, and driven into the darkness of this
little corner, she allowed herself to be walled in, the victim of the
jealousy of the other ladies, who would gladly have buried that
dangerous beauty. She had, of course, no friend to encourage her to
maintain the place she first held in the front rank; then each of
those treacherous fair ones would have enjoined on the men of her
circle on no account to take out our poor friend, under pain of the
severest punishment. That, my dear fellow, is the way in which those
sweet faces, in appearance so tender and so artless, would have formed
a coalition against the stranger, and that without a word beyond the
question, 'Tell me, dear, do you know that little woman in blue?'
--Look here, Martial, if you care to run the gauntlet of more
flattering glances and inviting questions than you will ever again
meet in the whole of your life, just try to get through the triple
rampart which defends that Queen of Dyle, or Lippe, or Charente. You
will see whether the dullest woman of them all will not be equal to
inventing some wile that would hinder the most determined man from
bringing the plaintive stranger to the light. Does it not strike you
that she looks like an elegy?"

"Do you think so, Montcornet? Then she must be a married woman?"

"Why not a widow?"