and behold, at the end of five months, here he is back again! His
unexpected arrival must have sadly annoyed the Duchess de Lucenay,
though poor De Lucenay is a very inoffensive creature," said Sarah, with
an ill-natured smile. "Nor will Madame de Lucenay be the only one to
feel vexation at his thus changing his mind; her friend, M. de St. Remy,
will duly and affectionately sympathise in all her regrets on the
subject."

"Come, come, my dear Sarah, I cannot allow you to scandalise; say that
this return of M. de Lucenay is a nuisance to everybody; the duke is
sufficiently disagreeable for you to generalise the regret his
unexpected presence occasions."

"I do not slander, I merely repeat. It is also said that M. de St. Remy,
the model of our young _elegantes_, whose splendid doings have filled
all Paris, is all but ruined! 'Tis true, he has by no means reduced
either his establishment or his expenditure; however, there are several
ways of accounting for that; in the first place, Madame de Lucenay is
immensely rich."

"What a horrible idea!"

"Still I only repeat what others say. There, the duke sees us; he is
coming towards us; we must resign ourselves to our fate,--miserable, is
it not? I know nothing so hard to bear as that man's company; he makes
himself so very disagreeable, and then laughs so disgustingly loud at
the silly things he says. Indeed, he is so boisterous that the bare idea
of him makes one think of pretending to faint, or any other pretext, to
avoid him. Talking of fainting, pray let me beg of you, if you have the
least regard for your fan or essence-bottle, to beware how you allow him
to handle either, for he has the unfortunate habit of breaking whatever
he touches, and all with the most facetious self-satisfied air
imaginable."

END OF VOLUME I.

* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:

This e-text was prepared from numbered edition 505 of the 1000 printed.

Minor punctuation and capitalization corrections have been made without
comment.

Minor typographical errors of single words, otherwise spelled correctly
throughout the text have been made without comment.

Word Variations appearing in the original text which have been retained:

"bull-dog" (1) and "bulldog" (2)
"protege" (1), "protegee" (8) and "proteges" (1)
"rencontre" (2) and "rencounter" (1)
"Sarah Seyton of Halsburg" (1) and "Sarah Seyton of Halsbury" (1)

Words using the [oe] ligature, which hav