Eight months after her marriage, Madame Necker admits that she had Gibbon every day to her house.

He says that she was very cordial.

She would have it understood that she received him only for the sake of gratifying a feminine vanity.

For her own sake one might prefer his interpretation to hers.

It is difficult to believe that the essentially simple-minded Madame Necker would have asked a man every day to her house merely to triumph over him; and more difficult still to believe that the man would have gone if such had been the object.