She was handsome in her own refined and delicate way, especially at night, when the sparkle of her white neck and arms and the added brightness of her dress gave her the accent and colour she was somewhat lacking in at other times.

Naturally, she was in no want of suitors, for she was rich and her father was influential, but she said 'No' many times, and was nearly thirty before M.de Chateauvieux, the first secretary of the French Embassy, persuaded her to marry him.

Since then she had filled an effective place in Parisian society.

Her husband had abandoned diplomacy for politics, in which his general tendencies were Orleanist, while in literature he was well known as a constant contributor to the _Revue des Deux Mondes_.

He and his wife maintained an interesting, and in its way influential, _salon_, which provided a meeting ground for the best English and French society, and showed off at once the delicate quality of Madame de Chateauvieux's intelligence and the force and kindliness of her womanly tact.
Shortly after her marriage the father and mother died, within eighteen months of each other, and Eustace found his lot in life radically changed.