of his attraction if he had lost the pleasant savour of incorrectness that attached to him, and if she had not had to take all those precautions about his going to another hotel, &c, &c, which enabled her to hold her place in courts and embassies, and made her friends all able to say with clear consciences, "Nothing in it, oh dear! nothing in it whatever!" Not that she cared about anyone believing that there was nothing in it; she did not even wish anybody to believe it; she only wanted it said—that was all; because, whilst it can be said, a woman "goes everywhere" still, and though Heloise or Francesca may be willing to "lose the world for love," the Femme Galante has no notion of doing anything of the sort.
"She must have refused him?" the Duc de St. Louis said to her more than once, harassed by chagrin at the failure of his project, and by a curiosity which his good breeding forbade him to seek to satisfy at the fountain head.
"Oh, I daresay she did," said Madame Mila. "Of course she did. But if she care for him,
