But she had decided, and the thing was done. She
would still be free,--Marie Max Goesler,--unless in abandoning her
freedom she would obtain something that she might in truth prefer to
it. When the letter was gone she sat disconsolate, at the window of
an up-stairs room in which she had written, thinking much of the
coronet, much of the name, much of the rank, much of that position
in society which she had flattered herself she might have won for
herself as Duchess of Omnium by her beauty, her grace, and her wit.
It had not been simply her ambition to be a duchess, without further
aim or object. She had fancied that she might have been such a
duchess as there is never another, so that her fame might have been
great throughout Europe, as a woman charming at all points. And she
would have had friends, then,--real friends, and would not have lived
alone as it was now her fate to do. And she would have loved her
ducal husband, old though he was, and stiff with pomp and ceremony.
She would have loved him, and done her best to add something of
brightness to his life. It was indeed true that there was one whom
she loved better; but of what avail was it to love a man who, when he
came to her, would speak to her of nothing but of the charms which he
found in another woman!
She had been sitting thus at her window, with a book in her hand, at
which she never looked, gazing over the park which was now beautiful
with its May verdure, when on a sudden a thought struck her.
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