"What does it feel like to go to Court? Does it frighten you?"
"Oh, dear! no. It would do, I daresay, if you were in plain clothes; but trains and feathers make fine birds—with all the manners and habits of fine birds. Peacocks couldn't hop about in gutters, and London sparrows couldn't strut across Kensington Gardens, however much they both desired it. So when a woman, in addition to her ordinary best clothes, is attended by twenty-four yards of good satin which ought to be feeding the poor, nothing really abashes her."
"I suppose she feels like a queen."
"Well, to tell the truth, with her train over her arm and her tulle lappets hanging down her back, she feels like a widow carrying a waterproof; but she thinks she looks like a duchess, and that is a very supporting thought."
"Tell me, who is that beautiful woman with the tall soldierly man, coming in now?" said Farquhar.
"Oh! those are the Le Mesuriers of Greystone; isn't she divine? And she has the two loveliest little boys you ever saw or imagined. I'm longing to paint them."
"She is strikingly handsome."
"There is a very strange story about her and her twin sister, which I'll tell you some day."
"You shall; but you must tell me all about yourself first, and how you have come to know so much and learn so little."
Elisabeth looked round at him quickly. "What do you mean?"