As to the coming of the Princesse de Luxembourg, whose carriage, on the day on which she left the fruit, had drawn up outside the hotel, it had not passed unobserved by the little group of wives, the solicitor's, the barrister's and the magistrate's, who had for some time past been most concerned to know whether she was a genuine Marquise and not an adventuress, that Mme. de Villeparisis whom everyone treated with so much respect, which all these ladies were burning to hear that she did not deserve. Whenever Mme. de Villeparisis passed through the hall the chief magistrate's wife, who scented irregularities everywhere, would raise her eyes from her "work" and stare at the intruder in a way that made her friends die with laughter.
"Oh, well, you know," she explained with lofty condescension, "I always begin by believing the worst. I will never admit that a woman is properly married until she has shewn me her birth certificate and her marriage lines. But there's no need to alarm yourselves; just wait till I've finished my little investigation."
And so, day after day the ladies would come together, and, laughingly, ask one another: "Any news?"
But on the evening after the Princesse de Luxembourg's call the magistrate's wife laid a finger on her lips.
"I've discovered something."
"Oh, isn't Mme. Poncin simply wonderful? I never saw anyone. . . . But do tell us! What has happened?"
"Just listen to this. A woman with yellow hair and six inches of paint on her face and a carriage like a—you could smell it a mile off; which only a creature like that would dare to have—came here to-day to call on the Marquise, by way of!"
"Oh-yow-yow! Tut-tut-tut-tut. Did you ever! Why, it must be that woman we saw—you remember, Leader,—we said at the time we didn't at all like the look of her, but we didn't know that it was the 'Marquise' she'd come to see. A woman with a nigger-boy, you mean?"
"That's the one."
"D'you mean to say so? You don't happen to know her name?"