And in the mansion on the hill, on July 16, 1865, she fell asleep. A score of New York's foremost men were her honorary pallbearers. And all society made, for the last time, the long journey to Harlem to honor her memory.
So died Betty Bowen—Betty Jumel—Betty Burr—whatever you prefer to call her. She was New York's first and greatest official heart breaker. She was doubly fortunate, too, in missing the average old-super-woman's realization of having outgrown her wonder-charm. For when her life book of beauty and power and magnetism closed, Delusion tenderly took up the tale. And through a fairyland of imagined admiration and regal rank, Betty tottered happily to the very end.
CHAPTER SIX
ADRIENNE LECOUVREUR
THE "ACTRESS HEART QUEEN"
She was an ex-laundress, and the daughter of a hatter.
He was an ideal dime-novel hero, and the son of a king. She was all spirit. He was all body. And their love story is, perhaps, the strangest of its sort in the sad annals of hearts.
(Their great-great-granddaughter, by the way, was George Sand—a four-generation throwback of the nameless super-woman trait.)
Having thus rhapsodied with the hope of catching the reader's attention, one may bring up the curtain on a romance whose compelling interest cannot be spoiled by the most bungling writing.