Being always about with the Montague girls, Kondjé-Gul soon got invited

with them to the balls to which the commodore took his daughters. Having

been admitted to two or three aristocratic drawing-rooms, such as that

of Princess B---- and Marchioness d'A----, she obtained the entry to all

the others. With your knowledge of the infatuations of our fashionable

world, you can imagine the extravagant style of admiring gossip with

which such a beautiful rising star is greeted wherever she goes. I

should add that the young sinner understands it all very well, and is

very much flattered by it.

The mystery which surrounds her increases the peculiarity of our

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situation. Being always chaperoned by her mother, whose foreign type of

features creates an imposing impression, Kondjé-Gul is taken for one of

those young ladies who are models of filial respect. The style of their

house and of their dress, and that refined elegance which stamps them as

ladies of distinction, designate them no less indisputably the

possessors of a large fortune and of high rank. All this, you will

perceive, formed a crowning justification for the success which

Kondjé-Gul's remarkable beauty had of itself sufficed to achieve for

her. Then of course the fashionable reporters of the official receptions

fulfilled their duty by heralding the advent of this brilliant star.

They only made the mistake--one of those mistakes so common with

journalists--of describing her as a Georgian.

Confident in the security of our mystery, Kondjé-Gul and I find nothing

more delightful than the manoeuvres by which we deceive them all. We

have invented a code of signs, the meaning of which we keep to

ourselves, and which leads to some very amusing by-play between us.

Thus the other evening, at Madame de T----'s, she was sitting by Maud

and Suzannah, surrounded by a number of admirers, when the young Duke de

Marandal, one of the most ardent of my acknowledged rivals, was

lavishing upon her his most seductive attentions. Kondjé was listening

to him with a charming smile on her face. Now that evening, I must tell

you, she had resolved upon a bit of fun; and knowing that in France

unmarried girls are not supposed to wear jewellery, she had fastened on

her wrist a heavy gold bracelet as a token of her servitude. So while

the young duke was talking, she looked at me, playing carelessly the

while with what she calls her "slave's ring." You may guess how we

laughed together over it.




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