esides his military duties, had a place at Court,
to which he came during his term of waiting, leaving his major-general
in command. The Duke and Duchess were leading lives entirely apart, the
world none the wiser. Their marriage of convention shared the fate
of nearly all family arrangements of the kind. Two more antipathetic
dispositions could not well have been found; they were brought together;
they jarred upon each other; there was soreness on either side; then
they were divided once for all. Then they went their separate ways,
with a due regard for appearances. The Duc de Langeais, by nature
as methodical as the Chevalier de Folard himself, gave himself up
methodically to his own tastes and amusements, and left his wife at
liberty to do as she pleased so soon as he felt sure of her character.
He recognised in her a spirit pre-eminently proud, a cold heart, a
profound submissiveness to the usages of the world, and a youthful
loyalty. Under the eyes of great relations, with the light of a prudish
and bigoted Court turned full upon the Duchess, his honour was safe.

So the Duke calmly did as the _grands seigneurs_ of the eighteenth
century did before him, and left a young wife of two-and-twenty to her
own devices. He had deeply offended that wife, and in her nature there
was one appalling characteristic--she would never forgive an offence
when woman's vanity and self-love, with all that was best in her nature
perhaps, had been slighted, wounded in secret. Insult and injury in the
face of the world a woman loves to forget; there is a way open to her of
showing herself great; she is a woman in her forgiveness; but a secret
offence women never pardon; for secret baseness, as for hidden virtues
and hidden love, they have no kindness.

This was Mme la Duchesse de Langeais' real position, unknown to the
world. She herself did not reflect upon it. It was the time of the
rejoicings over the Duc de Berri's marriage. The Court and the Faubourg
roused itself from its listlessness and reserve. This was the real
beginning of that unheard-of splendour which the Government of the
Restoration carried too far. At that time the Duchess, whether for
reasons of her own, or from vanity, never appeared in public without a
following of women equally distinguished by name and fortune. As queen
of fashion she had her _dames d'atours_, her ladies, who modeled their
manner and their wit on hers. They had been cleverly chosen. None of her
sate