her friends at Paris letters stating that she had found a very rich
admirer in a celebrated English statesman, to whom she was indebted for
her establishment, &c.; and alluding, in very witty and satirical terms,
to his matrimonial engagement with the young English beauty at Paris, who
was then creating such a sensation--an engagement of which she
represented her admirer to be heartily sick, and extremely repentant.
Without mentioning names, her descriptions were unmistakable. Jasper, of
course, presented to Mrs. Lyndsay those letters (which, he said, the
person to whom they were addressed had communicated to one of her own gay
friends), and suggested that their evidence against Darrell would be
complete in Miss Lyndsay's eyes if some one, whose veracity Caroline
could not dispute, could corroborate the assertions of the letters; it
would be quite enough to do so if Mr. Darrell were even seen entering or
leaving the house of a person whose mode of life was so notorious. Mrs.
Lyndsay, who, with her consummate craft, saved her dignity by affected
blindness to the artifices at which she connived, declared that, in a
matter of inquiry which involved the private character of a man so
eminent, and to whom she owed so much, she would not trust his name to
the gossip of others. She herself would go to London. She knew that
odious, but too fascinating, Gabrielle by sight (as every one did who
went to the opera or drove in the Bois de Boulogne). Jasper undertook
that the Parisienne should show herself at her balcony at a certain day
at a certain hour, and that at that hour Darrell should call and be
admitted; and Mrs. Lyndsay allowed that that evidence would suffice.
Sensible of the power over Caroline that she would derive if, with her
habits of languor and her delicate health, she could say that she had
undertaken such a journey to be convinced with her own eyes of a charge
which, if true, would influence her daughter's conduct and destiny--Mrs.
Lyndsay did go to London--did see Gabrielle Desmarets at her balcony--did
see Darrell enter the house; and on her return to Paris did, armed with