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For twenty-five days of the month the camellias hite, and for five

they were red; no one ever knew the reason of this change of colour,

which I h I can not explain it; it was noticed both by her

friends and by the habitue's of the theatres to which she most often

went She was never seen with any flowers but camellias At the

florist's, Madame Barjon's, she had come to be called "the Lady of the

Camellias," and the name stuck to her

Like all those who move in a certain set in Paris, I knew that

Marguerite had lived with so men in

society, that she spoke of it openly, and that they themselves

boasted of it; so that all seemed equally pleased with one another

Nevertheless, for about three years, after a visit to Bagnees, she was

said to be living with an old duke, a foreigner, enormously rich, who

had tried to remove her as far as possible from her former life, and, as