"Take great pains with your toilet this evening, Doris—wear that set of pearls and rubies."
"If the duke were a widower," laughed Lady Doris to herself, "I should feel sure that the countess wanted me to make a conquest."
She was awed and impressed, in spite of herself, when she stood before the Duchess of Downsbury. The duke she remembered well; she felt no especial awe of him; she could tell, from the expression of his face, that he thought her beautiful. She was accustomed by this time to see men fall prostrate, as it were, before her beauty, but there was something in the high-bred, stately duchess before which my Lady Doris owned herself vanquished. She did not understand the emotion in Lady Linleigh's face as she led her to the duchess.
"Mamma," she said in a voice that trembled, "this is Lady Doris Studleigh, my husband's daughter."
The jeweled hands of the duchess trembled as they lay for one half minute on the golden head.
"I am pleased to see you," she said. "You are very fair; I hope you are as good as you are fair."
Lady Doris wondered why, for one half minute, every one around her looked so solemn, why her father's debonair face had lost its color, why Lady Estelle turned so hastily away, why Earle stood looking on with a strange light in his eyes. It was droll. Then she dismissed the thought. They were all more or less sentimental, and there was no accounting for sentimental people at all.
She was destined the same evening to feel a little more surprised. There had always been the most perfect harmony and sympathy of taste between the earl and his daughter, they resembled each other so closely. Lady Doris felt half inclined to dislike the duchess; her exclusiveness, her hauteur, awed her after a fashion that was rather disagreeable than otherwise. As usual, she went to the earl for sympathy.
"Papa," she said, "the worst enemy her grace ever had could not call her lively."
"She is no longer young; liveliness is one of the attributes of youth, you know, Doris."