When she married Lord Blessington her love life had not yet commenced; and, in fact, there could be no love life in such a marriage—­a marriage with a man much older than herself, scatter-brained, showy, and having no intellectual gifts.  So for a time she sought satisfaction in social triumphs, in capturing political and literary lions in order to exhibit them in her salon, and in spending money right and left with a lavish hand.  But, after all, in a woman of her temperament none of these things could satisfy her inner longings.  Beautiful, full of Celtic vivacity, imaginative and eager, such a nature as hers would in the end be starved unless her heart should be deeply touched and unless all her pent-up emotion could give itself up entirely in the great surrender.

After a few years of London she grew restless and dissatisfied.  Her surroundings wearied her.  There was a call within her for something more than she had yet experienced.  The earl, her husband, was by nature no less restless; and so, without knowing the reason—­which, indeed, she herself did not understand—­he readily assented to a journey on the Continent.

As they traveled southward they reached at length the town of Valence, where Count d’Orsay was still quartered with his regiment.  A vague, indefinable feeling of attraction swept over this woman, who was now a woman of the world and yet quite inexperienced in affairs relating to the heart.  The mere sound of the French officer’s voice, the mere sight of his face, the mere knowledge of his presence, stirred her as nothing had ever stirred her until that time.  Yet neither he nor she appears to have been conscious at once of the secret of their liking.  It was enough that they were soothed and satisfied with each other’s company.

Oddly enough, the Earl of Blessington became as devoted to D’Orsay as did his wife.  The two urged the count to secure a leave of absence and to accompany them to Italy.  This he was easily persuaded to do; and the three passed weeks and months of a languorous and alluring intercourse among the lakes and the seductive influence of romantic Italy.  Just what passed between Count d’Orsay and Margaret Blessington at this time cannot be known, for the secret of it has perished with them; but it is certain that before very long they came to know that each was indispensable to the other.

The situation was complicated by the Earl of Blessington, who, entirely unsuspicious, proposed that the Count should marry Lady Harriet Gardiner, his eldest legitimate daughter by his first wife.  He pressed the match upon the embarrassed D’Orsay, and offered to settle the sum of forty thousand pounds upon the bride.  The girl was less than fifteen years of age.  She had no gifts either of beauty or of intelligence; and, in addition, D’Orsay was now deeply in love with her stepmother.