Then my Lady Kilcroney was a woman of the world, to her finger-tips. The alliance, which she could not have prevented if she would, was a strange, foolish, unequal business. To silence ill-natured gossip and the malicious tattle of dear, intimate enemies, there was nothing for it but for her to take a firm stand of championship. ’Twas the only attitude to ensure respect, from Royalty downwards. To tell the truth, Kitty was getting a bit sick of Royalty, and would not have cared had she followed my Lady Flo’s example, but not upon this crisis. She knew how to take the Queen by this time, not being a born fool, and, indeed, had emerged more triumphantly than ever from a situation which might have lost her her place at Court. “I thought of you, ma’am,” she had said, turning up her eyes, “how you would have wished me to act, you that sets virtue before everything.” If the Queen had gathered a lower opinion of Pamela Pounce’s moral stamina from the interview than was justified by facts, she had gained a vastly higher one of my Lady Kilcroney’s. So the incident was closed to Kitty’s advantage. And now Pamela was wed, and my Lady Kilcroney had made quite a droll, pretty feast of it. Farmer Pounce, in blue cloth and brass buttons, Mrs. Pounce, in a lovely new bonnet trimmed for the occasion by her daughter, followed by a rosy progeny, had been really such honest, simple dears that Kitty quite loved them; and Pamela (sensible, excellent creature that she was, who had chosen to be married in a snowy muslin and a white chip), had looked so sweet and wholesome and happy, and withal remained so respectfully in her place, was so pleasantly unassuming, that my Lady very genuinely considered old Bellairs’s nephew to be more lucky than he deserved. She had convened her special circle to witness the ceremony, which was performed in her own drawing-room at Hertford Street; not omitting Mistress Lafone, for Kitty would not put it into the minx’s power to say that she was afraid of her tongue. There was a brisk passage between these two ladies, out of which Kitty, she flattered herself, emerged victorious. “Dear, to be sure,” had said Molly, with her most tart-sweet air, “how monstrous strange it will be to be ordering hats from your own niece, my Lady Kilcroney!” And my Lady had responded: she trusted to Heaven that Pamela would be more particular than ever, now, whom she served. Madame Mirabel had had the good sense to excuse herself on the ground of age and infirmity; a piece of tact which, coupled with the handsome present she bestowed on her esteemed partner, was as clever a stroke of business as the astute old lady had ever contrived.