Meanwhile, Madame de Treymes being engaged with a venerable Duchess
in a black shawl--all the older ladies present had the sloping
shoulders of a generation of shawl-wearers--her American visitor,
left in the isolation of his unimportance, was using it as a shelter
for a rapid survey of the scene.

He had begun his study of Fanny de Malrive's situation without any
real understanding of her fears. He knew the repugnance to divorce
existing in the French Catholic world, but since the French laws
sanctioned it, and in a case so flagrant as his injured friend's,
would inevitably accord it with the least possible delay and
exposure, he could not take seriously any risk of opposition on the
part of the husband's family. Madame de Malrive had not become a
Catholic, and since her religious scruples could not be played on,
the only weapon remaining to the enemy--the threat of fighting the
divorce--was one they could not wield without self-injury.
Certainly, if the chief object were to avoid scandal, common sense
must counsel Monsieur de Malrive and his friends not to give the
courts an opportunity of exploring his past; and since the echo of
such explorations, and their ultimate transmission to her son, were
what Madame de Malrive most dreaded, the opposing parties seemed to
have a common ground for agreement, and Durham could not but regard
his friend's fears as the result of over-taxed sensibilities. All
this had seemed evident enough to him as he entered the austere
portals of the Hotel de Malrive and passed, between the faded
liveries of old family servants, to the presence of the dreaded
dowager above. But he had not been ten minutes in that presence
before he had arrived at a faint intuition of what poor Fanny meant.
It was not in the exquisite mildness of the old Marquise, a little