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 money was swallowed up by speculation; she and her father (the mother was dead) were threatened with such reduction of means as seemed to them penury; and the marriage with the duke had speedily followed--the precise degree of unwillingness on the part of Mlle.

de Beville being a disputed point.

Men said she was forced into the marriage, women very much doubted it; the lady herself gave no indication, and her father declared that the match was one of affection.