It may be remembered that when Lady Glencora Palliser was shown into Madame Goesler’s room, Madame Goesler had just explained somewhat forcibly to the Duke of Omnium her reasons for refusing the loan of his Grace’s villa¹ at Como. She had told the Duke in so many words that she did not mean to give the world an opportunity of maligning² her, and it would then have been left to the Duke to decide whether any other arrangements might have been made for taking Madame Goesler to Como, had he not been interrupted. That he was very anxious to take her was certain. The green brougham had already been often enough at the door in Park Lane to make his Grace feel that Madame Goesler’s company was very desirable — was, perhaps, of all things left for his enjoyment⁴, the one thing the most desirable. Lady Glencora had spoken to her husband of children crying for the top brick of the chimney. Now it had come to this, that in the eyes of the Duke of Omnium Marie Max Goesler was the top brick of the chimney. She had more wit for him than other women — more of that sort of wit which he was capable of enjoying. She had a beauty which he had learned to think more alluring⁵ than other beauty. He was sick of fair faces, and fat arms, and free necks. Madame Goesler’s eyes sparkled as other eyes did not sparkle, and there was something of the vagueness of mystery in the very blackness and gloss⁶ and abundance of her hair — as though her beauty was the beauty of some world which he had not yet known. And there was a quickness and yet a grace of motion about her which was quite new to him. The ladies upon whom the Duke had of late most often smiled had been somewhat slow — perhaps almost heavy — though, no doubt, graceful⁷ withal. In his early youth he remembered to have seen, somewhere in Greece, such a houri as was this Madame Goesler. The houri in that case had run off with the captain of a Russian vessel⁸ engaged in the tallow trade; but not the less was there left on His Grace’s mind some dreamy memory of charms which had impressed him very strongly when he was simply a young Mr Palliser, and had had at his command not so convenient a mode of sudden abduction as the Russian captain’s tallow ship. Pressed hard by such circumstances as these, there is no knowing how the Duke might have got out of his difficulties had not Lady Glencora appeared upon the scene.

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