She had been quite pleased with Mme.

de Lorcy, her sympathy and her kindly services, and she had bestowed her most amiable attentions upon her.Mme.de Lorcy had done her best to respond to her advances; but she found herself revolted by this old magpie whose prattling never ceased, and whose chief delight was in the recital of the secret chronicles of every capital of Europe; Mme.

de Lorcy, in fact, soon grew disgusted with her cosmopolitan gossip and her physiology; she found her cynical and evil-minded.

In meeting her at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, her first impulse was to evade her; but suddenly she changed her mind.

For some weeks past she had been governed by a fixed idea, about which all else revolved; an inspiration came over her, which doubtless fell directly from the skies.
"Princess Gulof," said she to herself, "has passed her life in running around the world; her real home is a railroad-car; there is not a large city where she has failed to make a sojourn; she is acquainted with the whole world: is it not possible that she knows Count Larinski ?" Mme.