“Curious?” Harleston smiled.
“Naturally—it’s not in you to give praise undeserved.”
“I’m not sure it is praise, Clarke; it depends on one’s point of view. However, the lady in question bears several names which she uses as expediency or her notion suits her. Her maiden name was Madeline Cuthbert. She married a Colonel Spencer of Ours; he divorced her, after she had eloped with a rich young lieutenant of his regiment. She didn’t marry the lieutenant; she simply plucked him clean and he shot himself. I’ve never understood why he didn’t first shoot her.”
“Doubtless it shows her cleverness?” Clarke remarked.
“Doubtless it does,” replied Harleston, neatly spitting a leaf on the pavement with his stick. “Afterward she had various adventures with various wealthy men, and always won. Her particularly spectacular adventure was posing, at the instigation of the Duke of Lotzen, as the wife of the Archduke Armand of Valeria; and she stirred up a mess of turmoil until the matter was cleared up.”
“I remember something of it!” Clarke exclaimed.
“By that time she had so fascinated her employer, the Duke of Lotzen, that he actually married her—morganatically, of course.”
“Again showing her astonishing cleverness.”
“Just so—and, cleverer still, she held him until his death five years later. Which death, despite the authorized report, was not natural: the King of Valeria killed him in a sword duel in Ferida Palace on the principal street of Dornlitz. The lady then betook herself to Paris and took up her present life of extreme respectability—and political usefulness to our friends of Wilhelm-strasse. In fact, I understand that she has more than made good professionally, as well as fascinated at least half a dozen Cabinet Ministers besides.
“Wilhelm-strasse?” Clarke queried.