In the midst of this awful calm it was that Lady Bearcroft blurted out with loud voice--“Amazing entertaining we are! so many clever people got together, too, for what?” It was worth while to have seen Lady Masham’s face at that moment! Lady Bearcroft saw it, and, fearing no mortal, struck with the comic of that look of Lady Masham’s, burst into laughter uncontrolled, and the contrast of dignity and gravity in Lady Davenant only made her laugh the more, till out of the room at last she ran. Lady Masham all the while, of course, never betrayed the slightest idea that she could by any possibility have been the object of Lady Bearcroft’s mirth. But Lady Davenant--how did she take it? To her daughter’s infinite relief, quite quietly; she looked rather amused than displeased. She bore with Lady Bearcroft, altogether, better than could have been expected; because she considered her only as a person unfortunately out of her place in society, and, without any fault of her own, dragged up from below to a height of situation for which nature had never intended, and neither art nor education had ever prepared her; whose faults and deficiencies were thus brought into the flash of day at once, before the malice of party and the fastidiousness of fashion, which knows not to distinguish between _manque d’esprit_, and _manque d’usage_. Not so Lady Davenant: she made liberal and philosophic allowance for even those faults of manner which were most glaring, and she further suspected that Lady Bearcroft purposely exaggerated her own vulgarity, partly for diversion, partly to make people stare, and partly to prevent their seeing what was habitual, and what involuntary, by hiding the bounds of reality. Of this Lady Masham had not the most distant conception; on the contrary, she was now prepared to tell a variety of odd anecdotes of Lady Bearcroft. She had seen, she said, this extraordinary person before, but had never met her in society, and delighted she was unexpectedly to find her here--“quite a treat.” Such characters are indeed seldom met with at a certain height in the atmosphere of society, and such were peculiarly and justly Lady Masham’s delight, for they relieved and at the same time fed a sense of superiority insufficient to itself. Such a person is fair, privileged, safe game, and Lady Masham began, as does a reviewer determined to be especially severe, with a bit of praise.