“It seems hard to realize that you are a duchess,” he said; “that you ought to be queening it over there amongst the best of them.”
She smiled faintly.
“I find it hard to realize, too,” she said.
“A duchess is a very great personage, even in England,” he said.
“Yes,” she assented. “She is next to royalty itself; all the other women make way for her, and everybody treats her as if she were made of something better than ordinary flesh and blood. If you had seen, as I have, a whole room full of people begin to flutter and turn with toadying, simpering smiles when a duke or a duchess entered!”
“Just so,” he said; “and I’m thinking that your disappearance, Esmeralda, must have caused some stir and excitement even amongst that flutter-headed crowd. They must be looking for you.”
“Perhaps,” she said, listlessly, as she thought that Trafford would be glad that she had gone so noiselessly and quietly. He would have Lady Ada to console him.
Varley saw that she did not want to say any more, and he changed the subject.
“Dog’s Ear has been very quiet since the affair of the coach,” he said.
“Has anything been done?” she asked.