“How do you spell it?”
“L—e—c—z—i—n—s—k—i.”
“Good. Capital. You have a real gift for spelling,” he exclaimed.
“Will you be quiet,” she said, severely, “and answer my question? Are you familiar with the name?”
“I should never venture to be familiar with a name I didn’t know,” he asserted.
“Ah, you don’t know it? You have never heard of Stanislas Leczinski, who was king of Poland? Of Marie Leczinska, who married Louis XV.?”
“Oh, to be sure. I remember. The lady whose portrait one sees at Versailles.”
“Quite so. Very well,” she continued, “the last representative of the Leczinskis, in the elder line, was the Princess Anna Leczinska, who, in 1858, married the Duke of Zeln. She was the daughter of John Leczinski, Duke of Grodnia and Governor of Galicia, and of the Archduchess Henrietta d’.ste, a cousin of the Emperor of Austria. She was also a great heiress, and an extremely handsome woman. But the Duke of Zeln was a bad lot, a viveur, a gambler, a spendthrift. His wife, like a fool, made her entire fortune over to him, and he proceeded to play ducks and drakes with it. By the time their son was born he’d got rid of the last farthing. Their son wasn’t born till ’63, five years after their marriage. Well, and then, what do you suppose the Duke did?”
“Reformed, of course. The wicked husband always reforms when a child is born, and there’s no more money,” he generalised.
“You know perfectly well what he did,” said she. “He petitioned the German Diet to annul the marriage. You see, having exhausted the dowry of the Princess Anna, it occurred to him that if she could only be got out of the way, he might marry another heiress, and have the spending of another fortune.”