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Madame de Treymes
by
Durham seized his opportunity. “Is she so very reprehensible too?”
Mrs. Boykin pursed up her small colourless mouth. “I can’t speak from personal experience. I know Madame de Treymes slightly–I have met her at Fanny’s–but she never remembers the fact except when she wants me to go to one of her ventes de charite. They all remember us then; and some American women are silly enough to ruin themselves at the smart bazaars, and fancy they will get invitations in return. They say Mrs. Addison G. Pack followed Madame d’Alglade around for a whole winter, and spent a hundred thousand francs at her stalls; and at the end of the season Madame d’Alglade asked her to tea, and when she got there she found that was for a charity too, and she had to pay a hundred francs to get in.”
Mrs. Boykin paused with a smile of compassion. “That is not my way,” she continued. “Personally I have no desire to thrust myself into French society–I can’t see how any American woman can do so without loss of self-respect. But any one can tell you about Madame de Treymes.”
“I wish you would, then,” Durham suggested.
“Well, I think Elmer had better,” said his wife mysteriously, as Mr. Boykin, at this point, advanced across the wide expanse of Aubusson on which his wife and Durham were islanded in a state of propinquity without privacy.
“What’s that, Bessy? Hah, Durham, how are you? Didn’t see you at Auteuil this afternoon. You don’t race? Busy sight-seeing, I suppose? What was that my wife was telling you? Oh, about Madame de Treymes.”
He stroked his pepper-and-salt moustache with a gesture intended rather to indicate than conceal the smile of experience beneath it. “Well, Madame de Treymes has not been like a happy country–she’s had a history: several of ’em. Some one said she constituted the feuilleton of the Faubourg daily news. La suite au prochain numero–you see the point? Not that I speak from personal knowledge. Bessy and I have never cared to force our way–” He paused, reflecting that his wife had probably anticipated him in the expression of this familiar sentiment, and added with a significant nod: “Of course you know the Prince d’Armillac by sight? No? I’m surprised at that. Well, he’s one of the choicest ornaments of the Jockey Club: very fascinating to the ladies, I believe, but the deuce and all at baccara. Ruined his mother and a couple of maiden aunts already–and now Madame de Treymes has put the family pearls up the spout, and is wearing imitation for love of him.”
“I had that straight from my maid’s cousin, who is employed by Madame d’Armillac’s jeweller,” said Mrs. Boykin with conscious pride.
“Oh, it’s straight enough–more than she is!” retorted her husband, who was slightly jealous of having his facts reinforced by any information not of his own gleaning.
“Be careful of what you say, Elmer,” Mrs. Boykin interposed with archness. “I suspect John of being seriously smitten by the lady.”
Durham let this pass unchallenged, submitting with a good grace to his host’s low whistle of amusement, and the sardonic enquiry: “Ever do anything with the foils? D’Armillac is what they call over here a fine lame.”
“Oh, I don’t mean to resort to bloodshed unless it’s absolutely necessary; but I mean to make the lady’s acquaintance,” said Durham, falling into his key.
Mrs. Boykin’s lips tightened to the vanishing point. “I am afraid you must apply for an introduction to more fashionable people than we are. Elmer and I so thoroughly disapprove of French society that we have always declined to take any part in it. But why should not Fanny de Malrive arrange a meeting for you?”
Durham hesitated. “I don’t think she is on very intimate terms with her husband’s family–“
“You mean that she’s not allowed to introduce her friends to them,” Mrs. Boykin interjected sarcastically; while her husband added, with an air of portentous initiation: “Ah, my dear fellow, the way they treat the Americans over here–that’s another chapter, you know.”