However, this is not to say that I was in any manner prepared to resume the habits of my former existence. Why, I might play the cold-kneed prude for as long as I desired, regardless of what the world assumed. While they regarded me as her protégée, I was introduced among her more intimate circle of friends as her ‘relation’. The invitations that you might expect soon followed. I accompanied ‘my relation’ to the usual dinners, card parties, gatherings and visits to the theatre. There were the rides through the Bois de Boulogne and excursions upon the river, as well as a masquerade at the petite maison of the Marquis de Sillery, held in a sumptuous Turkish pavilion at the bottom of his pleasure garden. Although I willingly followed my friend to these places, I took care to remove hands from my bodice and to slide like a slippery fish from embraces. My actions were so discreet that I did not believe she was aware that I thwarted my admirers, when in fact my indifference to their approaches suited her grand scheme for me perfectly.

It was at about this time that I began to wonder what had become of the self-portrait she had requested from me. I had not spied it among her possessions since the day she dispatched it to be framed. I had searched for it upon the wall in her closet where hung several others, and had even peered amidst her collections of porcelain and geegaws, but to no avail. No sooner had I truly begun to fear that it had displeased her in some manner than the mystery was solved. One morning, Madame Laurent, an acquaintance of Mrs Elliot, came to call. Having been introduced, the visitor approached me and with great familiarity kissed me upon both cheeks before exclaiming: ‘Ah, la belle artiste anglaise! Has there been a pair of hands into which Madame Elliot has not placed your fair portrait?’ Then, much to my surprise, I received a commission upon the spot.

This was but the beginning. Within a handful of days, I had a letter from none other than the celebrated Mademoiselle Dervieux, an opera dancer in the highest of keeping who wished to have her likeness rendered. Later, I received a similar entreaty from Madame de Beauvert, the mistress to General Dumouriez. Gentlemen too learned that they might procure a private audience with me. There came the Chevalier de Jean, a young man with a face quite ruined by the smallpox, who lounged and flirted as if his success with me was assured, and the ancient Duc de Bouillon, who wore a lifetime of debauchery between his double chin and heavy-lidded eyes.