"Not at all," she answered. "Lord Hertford is deceived if he thinks that I am beautiful. Take each feature of my face separately and put them on the table; not one of them will bear examination. Put them together and illuminated, they are not bad. It is a homogeneous ugliness, nothing more." A slight roll was disturbing the _Jason_. Lady Hester, lost in her thoughts, remained leaning against the netting. She recalled to mind some of those mordant sallies which had crucified her victims. Pitt had decided to create an Order of Merit; England was at this time in the thick of the war against France. Lord Liverpool was entrusted with the task of deciding on the colours of the decoration; and one evening he entered the Prime Minister's drawing-room, quite proud of himself and brandishing a tricolour ribbon. "See," cried he, "how I have succeeded in combining colours which will flatter the natural pride: red is the British flag; blue is the symbol of liberty; white, the symbol of loyalty." All present expressed their admiration. "Perfect! Excellent! The King will be pleased!" they exclaimed. "I am sure of it," remarked Lady Hester, "but it seems to me that I have seen that combination of colours somewhere!" "Where was it?" inquired Liverpool, taken aback. "Well, on the cockades of the French soldiers!" "What ought to be done, Lady Hester? I have ordered five hundred yards of it. What use can I make of it?" "To keep up your breeches, my lord, when you put papers there which you never find and which you look for at the bottom of one pocket, then at the bottom of another, like an eel at the bottom of a fish-pond. I am always afraid that some misfortune will happen to your breeches!" And when Addington (the duchess's son still) had had the fancy to have himself created Lord Raleigh, she had conceived a pretty caricature. Her uncle, Pitt, played the part of Queen Elizabeth, dancing a minuet with his nose in the air; Addington, as Sir Walter Raleigh, made his obeisance; and the King wore the costume of a Court jester! Pitt, after indulging in roars of laughter over this description, had despatched a dozen emissaries to all parts of London to secure, no matter at what cost, the famous caricature, which only existed in Lady Hester's imagination. And there was no Lord Raleigh! And the delicious scenes in which she caused the entire Court to pass in review, those scenes of which she was at once author, actor and costumer. With her the talent of imitation amounted wellnigh to genius. She mimicked the women who were the leaders of the fashionable world, or who had been its leaders, such as the Duchess of Devonshire: "Fu! Fu! Fuh! what shall I do, my dear. Oh, dear! how frightened I am!" She mimicked the duchess's visit to the Foreign Office to demand back a note which she had sent to someone there. Perceiving a shabby little clerk, she said to him: