"What a lovely necklace you are wearing!"
To make personal remarks, we all know, is essentially vulgar, is indeed a breach of the commonest show of good breeding; yet somehow Mrs. Geoffrey's tone does not touch on vulgarity, does not even belong to the outermost skirts of ill-breeding. She has an inborn gentleness of her own, that carries her safely over all social difficulties.
The duchess is amused.
"It is pretty, I think," she says. "The duke," with a grave look, "gave it to me just two years after my son was born."
"Did he?" says Mona. "Geoffrey gave me these pearls," pointing to a pretty string round her own white neck, "a month after we were married. It seems quite a long time ago now," with a sigh and a little smile. "But your opals are perfect. Just like the moonlight. By the by," as if it has suddenly occurred to her, "did you ever see the lake by moonlight? I mean from the mullioned window in the north gallery?"
"The lake here? No," says the duchess.
"Haven't you?" in surprise. "Why it is the most enchanting thing in the world. Oh, you must see it: you will be delighted with it. Come with me, and I will show it to you," says Mona, eagerly, rising from her seat in her impulsive fashion.
She is plainly very much in earnest, and has fixed her large expressive eyes—lovely as loving—with calm expectancy upon the duchess. She has altogether forgotten that she is a duchess (perhaps, indeed, has never quite grasped the fact), and that she is an imposing and portly person not accustomed to exercise of any description.
For a moment her Grace hesitates, then is lost. It is to her a new sensation to be taken about by a young woman to see things. Up to this, it has been she who has taken the young women about to see things. But Mona is so openly and genuinely anxious to bestow a favor upon her to do her, in fact, a good turn, that she is subdued, sweetened, nay, almost flattered, by this artless desire to please her for "love's sake" alone.
She too rises, lays her hand on Mona's arm, and walks through the long room, and past the county generally, to "see the lake by moonlight." Yet it is not for the sake of gazing upon almost unrivalled scenery she goes, but to please this Irish girl, whom so very few can resist.