"Colonel Mahon!" said another, laughing; "I wish you joy of your gallantry, Merode." "And worse, still," broke in a third, "she is not his wife. She never could obtain the divorce to allow her to marry again. Some said it was the husband—a Dutchman, I believe—refused it; but the simple truth is, she never wished it herself."
"How, not wish it?" remarked three or four in a breath.
"Why should she? Has she not every advantage the position could give her, and her liberty into the bargain? If we were back again in the old days of the Monarchy, I agree with you, she could not go to court; she would receive no invitations to the 'petits soupers' of the Trianon, nor be asked to join the discreet hunting-parties at Fontainebleu; but we live in less polished days; and if we have little virtue, we have less hypocrisy."
"Voila!" cried another, "only I, for one, would never believe that we are a jot more wicked or more dissolute than those powdered and perfumed scoundrels that played courtier in the King's bed-chamber."
"There, they are getting out, at the 'Tour d'Argent!'" cried another. "She is a splendid figure, and what magnificence in her dress!"
"Mahon waits on her like a laquais," muttered a grim old lieutenant of infantry.
"Rather like a well-born cavalier, I should say," interposed a young hussar. "His manner is all that it ought to be—full of devotion and respect."
"Bah!" said the former; "a soldier's wife, or a soldier's mistress—for it's all one—should know how to climb up to her place on the baggage-wagon, without three lazy rascals to catch her sleeve or her petticoats for her."
"Mahon is as gallant a soldier as any in this army," said the hussar; "and I'd not be in the man's coat who disparaged him in any thing."
"By St. Denis!" broke in another, "he's not more brave than he is fortunate. Let me tell you, it's no slight luck to chance upon so lovely a woman as that, with such an immense fortune, too."