The Duchess, herself the superlative of beauty, wealth, and position, was married to the highest noble in the Three Kingdoms.
Those who talked about such matters said that their progeny were exactly like their parents—a peculiarity of the aristocratic and wealthy.
They all looked like brothers and sisters, except their parents, who, such was their purity of blood, the perfection of their manners, and the opulence of their condition, might have been taken for their own children’s elder son and daughter.
The daughters, with one exception, were all married to the highest nobles in the land.
That exception was the Lady Coriander, who—there being no vacancy above a marquis and a rental of £1,000,000—waited.
Gathered around the refined and sacred circle of their breakfast-table, with their glittering coronets, which, in filial respect to their father’s Tory instinct and their mother’s Ritualistic tastes, they always wore on their regal brows, the effect was dazzling as it was refined.
It was this peculiarity and their strong family resemblance which led their brother-in-law, the good-humoured St. Addlegourd, to say that, “’Pon my soul, you know, the whole precious mob looked like a ghastly pack of court cards—don’t you know?”
St. Addlegourd was a radical.
Having a rent-roll of £15,000,000, and belonging to one of the oldest families in Britain, he could afford to be.
“Mamma, I’ve just dropped a pearl,” said the Lady Coriander, bending over the Persian hearth-rug.