Has the reader forgotten Miss Ginevra Fanshawe? If so, I must be allowed to reintroduce that young lady as a thriving pupil of Madame Beck’s; for such she was. On her arrival in the Rue Fossette , two or three days after my sudden settlement there, she encountered me with very little surprise. She must have had good blood in her veins, for never was any duchess more perfectly, radically, unaffectedly nonchalante than she: a weak, transient amaze was all she knew of the sensation of wonder. Most of her other faculties seemed to be in the same flimsy condition: her liking and disliking, her love and hate, were mere cobweb and gossamer; but she had one thing about her that seemed strong and durable enough, and that was⁠—her selfishness.