Produced by David Widger
By Winston Churchill
Honora Leffingwell is the original name of our heroine. She was born inthe last quarter of the Nineteenth Century, at Nice, in France, and shespent the early years of her life in St. Louis, a somewhat conservativeold city on the banks of the Mississippi River. Her father was RandolphLeffingwell, and he died in the early flower of his manhood, whilefilling with a grace that many remember the post of United States Consulat Nice. As a linguist he was a phenomenon, and his photograph in thetortoise-shell frame proves indubitably, to anyone acquainted with thefashions of 1870, that he was a master of that subtlest of all arts,dress. He had gentle blood in his veins, which came from Virginia throughKentucky in a coach and six, and he was the equal in appearance andmanners of any duke who lingered beside classic seas.
Honora has often pictured to herself a gay villa set high above thecurving shore, the amethyst depths shading into emerald, laced withmilk-white foam, the vivid colours of the town, the gay costumes; theexcursions, the dinner-parties presided over by the immaculate youngconsul in three languages, and the guests chosen from the haute noblesseof Europe. Such was the vision in her youthful mind, added to by degreesas she grew into young-ladyhood and surreptitiously became familiar withthe writings of Ouida and the Duchess, and other literature of aneducating cosmopolitan nature.
Honora's biography should undoubtedly contain a sketch of Mrs. RandolphLeffingwell. Beauty and dash and a knowledge of how to seat a table seemto have been the lady's chief characteristics; the only daughter of acarefully dressed and carefully, preserved widower, likewise alinguis