He therefore withdrew, prudently, as Lady Dudley entered.
"Well ?" said the Englishwoman to the marquise, "how far have they got ?" "They are madly in love; he has just told me so." "I wish he were uglier," said Lady Dudley, with a viperish look at Comte Felix.

"In other respects he is just what I want him: the son of a Jew broker who died a bankrupt soon after his marriage; but the mother was a Catholic, and I am sorry to say she made a Christian of the boy." This origin, which Nathan thought carefully concealed, Lady Dudley had just discovered, and she enjoyed by anticipation the pleasure she should have in launching some terrible epigram against Vandenesse.
"Heavens! I have just invited him to my house!" cried Madame d'Espard.
"Didn't I receive him at my ball ?" replied Lady Dudley.

"Some pleasures, my dear love, are costly." The news of the mutual attachment between Raoul and Madame de Vandenesse circulated in the world after this, but not without exciting denials and incredulity.

The countess, however, was defended by her friends, Lady Dudley, and Mesdames d'Espard and de Manerville, with an unnecessary warmth that gave a certain color to the calumny.
On the following Wednesday evening Raoul went to Madame d'Espard's, and was able to exchange a few sentences with Marie, more expressive by their tones than their ideas.

In the midst of the elegant assembly both found pleasure in those enjoyable sensations given by the voice, the gestures, the attitude of one beloved.