of rank, who was about to visit London, and who might be
enabled to see Mr. Darrell, and intercede on their behalf. Matilda fell
readily into the snare; the Frenchwoman went to London, with assumed
name and title, and with servants completely in her confidence. And such
(as the reader knows already) was that eloquent baroness who had
pleaded to Darrell the cause of his penitent daughter! No doubt the wily
Parisienne had calculated on the effect of her arts and her charms, to
decoy him into at least a passing forgetfulness of his faith to another.
But if she could not succeed there, it might equally achieve the object
in view to obtain the credit of that success. Accordingly, she wrote to
one of her friends at Paris letters stating that she had found a very
rich admirer in a celebrated English statesman, to whom she was indebted
for her establishment, &c.; and alluding, in very witty and satirical
terms, to his matrimonial engagement with the young English beauty at
Paris, who was then creating such a sensation--an engagement of
which she represented her admirer to be heartily sick, and extremely
repentant. Without mentioning names, her descriptions were unmistakable.
Jasper, of course, presented to Mrs. Lyndsay those letters (which, he
said, the person to whom they were addressed had communicated to one of
her own gay friends), and suggested that their evidence against Darrell
would be complete in Miss Lyndsay's eyes if some one, whose veracity
Caroline could not dispute, could corroborate the assertions of the
letters; it would be quite enough to do so if Mr. Darrell were even
seen entering or leaving the house of a person whose mode of life was
so notorious. Mrs. Lyndsay, who, with her consummate craft, saved her
dignity by affected blindness to the artifices at which she connived,
declared that, in a matter of inquiry which involved the private
character of a man so eminent, and to whom she owed so much, she would
not trust his name to the gossip of others. She herself would go to
London. She knew that odious, but too fascinating, Gabrielle by
sight (as every one did who went to the opera or drove in the Bois de
Boulogne). Jasper undertook that the Parisienne should show herself at
her balcony at a certain day at a certain hour, and that at that hour
Darrell should call and be admitted; and Mrs. Lyndsay allowed that that
evidence would suffice. Sensible of the power over Caroline that she
would derive if, with her hab