deprived her of valuable protection and advice. Shortly thereafter she
became a mother and found, in the realization of her new duties,
strength to resist the mutual attachment between herself and the young
and romantic Englishman, Lord Arthur Ormond Grenville, a student of
medicine who had nursed her and healed her bodily ailments, and who
died rather than compromise her. Heart-broken, the marquise withdrew
to the solitude of an old chateau situated between Moret and Montereau
in the midst of a neglected waste. She remained a recluse for almost a
year, given over utterly to her grief, refusing the consolations of
the Church offered her by the old cure of the village of Saint-Lange.
Then she re-entered society at Paris. There, at the age of about
thirty, she yielded to the genuine passion of the Marquis de
Vandenesse. A child, christened Charles, was born of this union, but
he perished at an early age under very tragic circumstances. Two other
children, Moina and Abel, were also the result of this love union.
They were favored by their mother above the two eldest children,
Helene and Gustave, the only ones really belonging to the Marquis
d'Aiglemont. Madame d'Aiglemont, when nearly fifty, a widow, and
having none of her children remaining alive save her daughter Moina,
sacrificed all her own fortune for a dower in order to marry the
latter to M. de Saint-Hereen, heir of one of the most famous families
of France. She then went to live with her son-in-law in a magnificent
mansion overlooking the Esplanade des Invalides. But her daughter gave
her slight return for her love. Ruffled one day by some remarks made
to her by Madame d'Aiglemont concerning the suspicious devotion of the
Marquis de Vandenesse, Moina went so far as to fling back at her
mother the remembrance of the latter's own guilty relations with the
young man's father. Terribly overcome by this attack, the poor woman,
who was a physical wreck, deaf and subject to heart disease, died in
1844. [A Woman of Thirty.]