“None other worth the mention,” she replied instantly; “Topham tells me you can talk horses, and that mystery of mysteries, American politics. But look at Miss Manners Dow. I'll warrant she is making Sir Charles see to his laurels, and young Stavordale is struck dumb.”
I looked up quickly and beheld Dolly surrounded by a circle of admirers.
“Mark the shot strike!” Lady Di continued, between the deals; “that time Chartersea went down. I fancy he is bowled over rather often,” she said slyly. “What a brute it is. And they say that that little woman she has for a father imagines a union with the duke will redound to his glory.”
“They say,” remarked Mrs. Meynel, sitting next me, “that the duke has thumbscrews of some kind on Mr. Manners.”
“Miss Manners is able to take care of herself,” said Topham.
“'On dit', that she has already refused as many dukes as did her Grace of Argyle,” said Mrs. Meynel.
I had lost track of the cards, and knew I was losing prodigiously. But my eyes went back again and again to the group by the doorway, where Dolly was holding court and dispensing justice, and perchance injustice. The circle increased. Ribands, generals whose chests were covered with medals of valour, French noblemen, and foreign ambassadors stopped for a word with the Beauty and passed on their way, some smiling, some reflecting, to make room for others. I overheard from the neighbouring tables a spiteful protest that a young upstart from the colonies should turn Lady Tankerville's drum into a levee. My ears tingled as I listened. But not a feathered parrot in the carping lot of them could deny that Miss Manners had beauty and wit enough to keep them all at bay. Hers was not an English beauty: every line of her face and pose of her body proclaimed her of that noble type of Maryland women, distinctly American, over which many Englishmen before and since have lost their heads and hearts.
“Egad!” exclaimed Mr. Storer, who was looking on; “she's already defeated some of the Treasury Bench, and bless me if she isn't rating North himself.”
Half the heads in the room were turned toward Miss Manners, who was exchanging jokes with the Prime Minister of Great Britain. I saw a corpulent man, ludicrously like the King's pictures, with bulging gray eyes that seemed to take in nothing. And this was North, upon whose conduct with the King depended the fate of our America. Good-natured he was, and his laziness was painfully apparent. He had the reputation of going to sleep standing, like a horse.
“But the Beauty contrives to keep him awake,” said Storer.