Enough, she married him, and "the cleverest woman in Europe"
had linked her fate to that "demmed idiot" Blakeney, and not even her
most intimate friends could assign to this strange step any other
motive than that of supreme eccentricity. Those friends who knew,
laughed to scorn the idea that Marguerite St. Just had married a fool
for the sake of the worldly advantages with which he might endow her.
They knew, as a matter of fact, that Marguerite St. Just cared nothing
about money, and still less about a title; moreover, there were at
least half a dozen other men in the cosmopolitan world equally
well-born, if not so wealthy as Blakeney, who would have been only too
happy to give Marguerite St. Just any position she might choose to covet.
As for Sir Percy himself, he was universally voted to be
totally unqualified for the onerous post he had taken upon himself.
His chief qualifications for it seemed to consist in his blind
adoration for her, his great wealth and the high favour in which he
stood at the English court; but London society thought that, taking
into consideration his own intellectual limitations, it would have
been wiser on his part had he bestowed those worldly advantages upon a
less brilliant and witty wife.
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