At last he, in despair, tried Lemongenseidlitz, and the ladies thawed slightly--their anticipations from that fashionable little quarter were couleur de rose. They would meet their people of the best _monde_, all their dearest--that is of course their most fashionable--friends; the dear Duchess of Frangipane, the Millamonts those charming people, M. le Marquis de Croix-et-Cordon, Sir Henry Pullinger, Mrs. Merivale-Delafield, were all there; that delightful person, too, the Graf von Rosenläu, who amused them so much at Baden last year, was, as of course Dunbar knew, Master of the Horse to the Prince of Lemongenseidlitz-Phizzstrelitz; they would be well received at the Court. Which last thing, however, they did not _say_, though they might imply, and assuredly fully thought it; since Lady Maréchale already pictured herself gently awakening his Serene Highness to the spiritual darkness of his soul in legitimatizing gaming-tables in his duchy, and Mrs. Protocol already beheld herself closeted with his First Minister, giving that venerable Metternich lessons in political economy, and developing to him a system for filling his beggared treasury to overflowing, without taxing the people a kreutzer--a problem which, though it might have perplexed Kaunitz, Colbert, Pitt, Malesherbes, Talleyrand, and Palmerston put together, offered not the slightest difficulty to _her_ enterprising intellect. Have I not said that Sherlock states women are at the top of the staircase while we are toiling up the first few steps? "The Duchess--Princess Hélène is a lovely woman, I think. Winton saw her at the Tuileries last winter, and raved about her beauty," said Dunbar, finding he had hit at last on an acceptable subject, and pursuing it with more zeal than discretion; for if there be one thing, I take it, more indiscreet than another, it is to praise woman to woman. Constance coughed and Agneta smiled, and both assented. "Oh yes--very lovely, they believed!" "And very lively--up to everything, I think I have heard," went on Dunbar, blandly, unconscious of the meaning of cough, smile, and assent. "Very lively!" sighed the Saint. "_Very_ lively!" smiled the Politician. "As gay a woman as Marie Antoinette," continued Dunbar, too intent on the truffles to pay en même temps much heed to the subject he was discussing. "She's copied the Trianon, hasn't she?--has fêtes and pastorals there, acts in comedies herself, shakes off etiquette and ceremonial as much as she can, and all that sort of thing, I believe?" Lady Maréchale leaned back in her chair, the severe virtue and dignified censure of a British matron and a modern Lucretia expressed in both attitude and countenance.