"And we called her, in her hearing, not a proper person?" gasped Lady Maréchale.
"We thought her a lorette! an intrigante! a dame d'industrie!" echoed Mrs. Protocol.
"Who wore paste jewels!"
"Who came from the Rue Bréda!"
"Who wanted to know us!"
"Whom we wouldn't know!"
I turned my Voightlander where their Voightlanders turned; there, in the royal box, leaning back in the fauteuil that marked her rank, there, with her lovely hazel eyes, her witching smile, her radiant beauty, matchless as the pearls gleaming above her brow, there sat the "adventuress—or worse!" of Vicq d'Azyr; the "evidently a not proper person" of my discerning sisters—H.S.H. Princess Hélène, Grand-Duchess of Lemongenseidlitz-Phizzstrelitz! Great Heavens! how had we never guessed her before? How had we never divined her identity? How had we never remembered all we had heard of her love of laisser-aller, her taste for adventure, her delight in travelling, when she could, unattended and incognita? How had we never put this and that together, and penetrated the metamorphosis?
"And I called her not a proper person!" gasped Lady Maréchale, again shrinking back behind the azure curtains; the projectiles she had shot with such vindictive severity, such delighted acrimony, from the murderous mortar of malice, recoiling back upon her head for once, and crushing her to powder. What reception would they have now at the Court? Von Rosenläu would be powerless; the Pullingers themselves would be better off! Pérette's pot of milk was smashed and spilt! "Adieu, veau, vache, cochon, couvée!"
When the pitcher lies shivered into fragments, and the milk is spilt, you know, poor Pérette's dreams are shivered and spilt with them. "I have not seen you at the palace yet?" asked her Grace of Frangipane. "We do not see you at the Court, mesdames?" asked M. de la Croix-et-Cordons. "How did it happen you were not at the Duchess's ball last night?" asked "those odious Pullingers." And what had my sister to say in reply? My clematis secured me a charming reception—how charming I don't feel called upon to reveal—but Princess Hélène, with that calm dignity which easily replaced, when she chose, her witching abandon, turned the tables upon her detractors, and taught them how dangerous it may be to speak ill—of the wrong people.