“You are not so stupid, after all!  He forbids her to see a single soul; we must steal our visit, if we go.”

“He is away, then?”

“The kind government has sent him on a special mission of inquiry to Algeria.  Three cheers for the government!”

“By all means,” said I.  “When are you going to approach the subject of who these people are?”

“You will not trust my discernment?”

“Alas, no!  You are too charitable—­to one half of humanity.”

“Well, I will tell you.  She is a great friend of my sister’s—­they were brought up in the same convent; she is also a good comrade of mine.”

“A good comrade?”

“That is just it; for I, you know, suffer hopelessly elsewhere.”

“What, Lady Cynthia still?”

“Still!” echoed Gustave with a tragic air.  But he recovered in a moment.  “Lady Cynthia being, however, in Switzerland, there is no reason why I should not go to Normandy.”

“Oh, Normandy?”

“Precisely.  It is there that the duchess—­”

“Oho!  The duchess?”

“Is residing in retirement in a small château, alone save for my sister’s society.”

“And a servant or two, I presume?”

“You are just right, a servant or two; for he is most stingy to her (though not, they say, to everybody), and gives her nothing when he is away.”

“Money is a temptation, you see.”

“Mon Dieu, to have none is a greater!” and Gustave shook his head solemnly.

“The duchess of what?” I asked patiently.

“You will have heard of her,” he said, with a proud smile.  Evidently he thought that the lady was a trump card.  “The Duchess of Saint-Maclou.”

I laid down my cigar, maintaining, however, a calm demeanor.

“Aha!” said Gustave.  “You will come, my friend?”

I could not deny that Gustave had a right to his little triumph; for a year ago, when the duchess had visited England with her husband, I had received an invitation to meet her at the Embassy.  Unhappily, the death of a relative (whom I had never seen) occurring the day before, I had been obliged to post off to Ireland, and pay proper respect by appearing at the funeral.  When I returned the duchess had gone, and Gustave had, half-ironically, consoled my evident annoyance by telling me that he had given such a description of me to his friend that she shared my sorrow, and had left a polite message to that effect.  That I was not much consoled needs no saying.  That I required consolation will appear not unnatural when I say that the duchess was one of the most brilliant and well-known persons in French society; yes, and outside France also.  For she was a cosmopolitan.  Her father was French, her mother American; and she had passed two or three years in England before her marriage.  She was very pretty, and, report said, as witty as a pretty woman need be.  Once she had been rich, but the