“You are growing tired of me, my friend,” she said: “and when I consider your youth and temptations, I cannot be surprised at it—yet, I own, that this thought gives me much greater pain than I could have supposed.”
“Bah! ma belle amie,” cried I, “you deceive yourself—I adore you—I shall always adore you; but it’s getting very late.”
Madame D’Anville sighed, and we parted. “She is not half so pretty or agreeable as she was,” thought I, as I mounted my horse, and remembered my appointment at the ambassador’s.
I took unusual pains with my appearance that evening, and drove to the ambassador’s hotel in the Rue Faubourg St. Honore, full half an hour earlier than I had ever done before. I had been some time in the rooms without discovering my heroine of the morning. The Duchess of H—n passed by.
“What a wonderfully beautiful woman,” said Mr. Howard de Howard (the spectral secretary of the embassy) to Mr. Aberton.
“Ay,” answered Aberton, “but to my taste, the Duchesse de Perpignan is quite equal to her—do you know her?”
“No—yes!” said Mr. Howard de Howard; “that is, not exactly—not well;” an Englishman never owns that he does not know a duchess.
“Hem!” said Mr. Aberton, thrusting his large hand through his lank light hair. “Hem—could one do anything, do you think, in that quarter?”
“I should think one might, with a tolerable person!” answered the spectral secretary, looking down at a pair of most shadowy supporters.
“Pray,” said Aberton, “what do you think of Miss—? they say she is an heiress.”