afterwards took in the Hotel de Crequy; and then the recollection of a
past feeling came distinctly out of the mist, as it were; and I called to
mind how, when we first took up our abode in the Hotel de Crequy, both
Lord Ludlow and I imagined that the arrangement was displeasing to our
hostess; and how it had taken us a considerable time before we had been
able to establish relations of friendship with her. Years after our
visit, she began to suspect that Clement (whom she could not forbid to
visit at his uncle's house, considering the terms on which his father had
been with his brother; though she herself never set foot over the Count
de Crequy's threshold) was attaching himself to mademoiselle, his cousin;
and she made cautious inquiries as to the appearance, character, and
disposition of the young lady. Mademoiselle was not handsome, they said;
but of a fine figure, and generally considered as having a very noble and
attractive presence. In character she was daring and wilful (said one
set); original and independent (said another). She was much indulged by
her father, who had given her something of a man's education, and
selected for her intimate friend a young lady below her in rank, one of
the Bureaucracie, a Mademoiselle Necker, daughter of the Minister of
Finance. Mademoiselle de Crequy was thus introduced into all the free-
thinking salons of Paris; among people who were always full of plans for
subverting society. 'And did Clement affect such people?' Madame de
Crequy had asked with some anxiety. No! Monsieur de Crequy had neither
eyes nor ears, nor thought for anything but his cousin, while she was by.
And she? She hardly took notice of his devotion, so evident to every one
else. The proud creature! But perhaps that was her haughty way of
concealing what she felt. And so Madame de Crequy listened, and
questioned, and learnt nothing decided, until one day she surprised
Clement with the note in his hand, of which she remembered the stinging
words so well, in which Virginie had said, in reply to a proposal Clement
had sent her through her father, that 'When she married she married a