uch an
alliance she looked at me for a moment with visible surprise.

"My dear Monsieur George, I have lived in the great world all my life.
It's the best that there is, but that's only because there is nothing
merely decent anywhere. It will accept anything, forgive anything,
forget anything in a few days. And after all who will he be marrying? A
charming, clever, rich and altogether uncommon woman. What did the world
hear of her? Nothing. The little it saw of her was in the Bois for a
few hours every year, riding by the side of a man of unique distinction
and of exclusive tastes, devoted to the cult of aesthetic impressions; a
man of whom, as far as aspect, manner, and behaviour goes, she might have
been the daughter. I have seen her myself. I went on purpose. I was
immensely struck. I was even moved. Yes. She might have been--except
for that something radiant in her that marked her apart from all the
other daughters of men. The few remarkable personalities that count in
society and who were admitted into Henry Allegre's Pavilion treated her
with punctilious reserve. I know that, I have made enquiries. I know
she sat there amongst them like a marvellous child, and for the rest what
can they say about her? That when abandoned to herself by the death of
Allegre she has made a mistake? I think that any woman ought to be
allowed one mistake in her life. The worst they can say of her is that
she discovered it, that she had sent away a man in love directly she
found out that his love was not worth having; that she had told him to go
and look for his crown, and that, after dismissing him she had remained
generously faithful to his cause, in her person and fortune. And this,
you will allow, is rather uncommon upon the whole."

"You make her out very magnificent," I murmured, looking down upon the
floor.

"Isn't she?" exclaimed the aristocratic Mrs. Blunt, with an almost
youthful ingenuousness, and in those black eyes which looked at me so
calmly there was a flash of the Southern beauty, still naive and
romantic, as if altogether untouched by experience. "I don't think there
is a single grain of vulgarity in all her enchanting person. Neither is
there in my son. I suppose you won't deny that he is uncommon." She
paused.

"Absolutely," I said in a perfectly conventional tone, I was now on my
mettle that she should not discover what there was humanly common in my
nature. She took my answer at her own