(“Dear to be sure, the poor young lady! One would think ’twas her funeral things they were getting together. Who are they going to marry her to? And why is my Lady Kilcroney managing it all, and that mortal tickled?) I wouldn’t recommend white satin for my Lady Selina,” she said out loud, “though I know it’s the usual thing, my Lady. And if I might venture, it wouldn’t do to be putting dead white next her face. No, my Lady Kilcroney, no, my Lady Selina, not if you was to rouge ever so and _that_ would be a thousand pities; my Lady’s skin is a treat to look at. And it’s her _cachet_ to be pale with those dark eyes--excuse me, my Lady, for dropping into French, it’s a way I got into in Paris. Now I’d like lace.” The milliner spoke slowly as if she were tasting one by one, the condiments of an exquisite dish. “A fine brim of real lace, my lady, with a tulle lining, three layers of tulle, and the middle one pale pink. Oh, pale, pale, pale.” Pamela twiddled her fingers in the air, mitigating the colour till it faded into nothingness. “The tint they’re calling in Paris, _cuisse de nymphe émue_. Excuse me, my Lady, I won’t be so bold as to translate it. Yes, your Ladyship, the French have droll minds! But your Ladyship has seized the idea; not pink, but just a warmth, a lightening of the white, ’twill be exquisite. A twist of silver ribbon to hold it together--Miss Popple, where’s that silver ribbon that came from Lyons? I have a model here,” went on Pamela, stooping to pull out one of the deep drawers of the cupboard which ran the length of the room, and in which the most special treasures in the millinery line were hidden away from the ordinary public, only to be brought out for the favoured. “I have a model here which is the very latest, out of Paris. It’ll never be seen at all, so to speak, till next month, and that on a Queen’s head.” Queen Charlotte’s Lady-in-waiting sprang up and tripped across the carpet to stand by the milliner’s side. “It must be worth while for a female of Fashion,” my Lady was thinking, “to have a post about Queen Marie Antoinette, always the first in the land in modes and in looks as in everything else.” Now Lady Selina Vereker, hearing the two women whisper as they stood together, lifted her eyes and watched and hearkened very intently. “The young lady’s just engaged I take it,” said Pamela, shaking the tissue paper from a cobweb vision of blue tulle and lace. “’Twas only ratified by Lady Ongar last night, from her retreat at Wimbledon. (They say it’s a convent of nuns my dear, but ’tis not generally known.)” “Dear, to be sure, the poor lady!” Here Kitty lowered her voice, but Selina’s irately keen ears caught the murmur. “Sadly ill-provided for. My Lord Ongar’s affairs in a desperate state. Hardly a brass farthing between the three poor girls! A most prodigious relief to have the third settled.” Then Pamela’s clear compassionate undertone.