The Grassini was beginning to sing in a relative silence. The previous week, the Duchess of Devonshire had had Mrs. Billington, soprano against contralto; the worldly rivalries were continued in music.... In the great drawing-room, skilfully illuminated, for the Duchess of Rutland was too much of a Beaufort by race to leave in the shadow the pretty curve of her profile, the regular beauty of her features, the softness of her long eyelashes, there was a basket of living flowers. The Marchioness of Salisbury, who possessed the piquant charm which belongs to Frenchwomen, and who was slipping on her gloves with supple gestures, quite natural to her, in the prettiest manner imaginable, the Countess of Mansfield, Lady Stafford, the Countess of Glandore, so aristocratic in her demeanour, Lady Sage and Sele, the Countess of Derby, painted by Lawrence when she was still the actress Elisa Farren, and that charming Lady Duncombe, that romantic blonde who had inspired John Hoppner's masterpiece, and the Viscountess Andover, and the Viscountess of St. Asaph and so many others, with their pretty airs or their beautiful faces, their loose tresses, their tall statures, their bosoms rising and falling and their gowns of Indian muslin which revealed the outline of their bodies at the slightest movement--so many others who had posed carelessly, and as if to amuse themselves, before Lawrence, painter of adored women, before Romney or before the miniaturist Cosway. Earl Grosvenor was talking in the embrasure of a door with the beautiful Lady Stafford. Lord Rivers, the Duke of Dorset, the Duke of Richmond, Lord Mulgrave fluttered about the Duchess of Devonshire. Perhaps they were making her guess at the last riddle of Fox, and the most true of English riddles: "My first denotes affliction which my second is destined to experience; my whole is the best antidote to soothe and cure this grief!" Perhaps also they were murmuring to her the verses which Southey had written in response to her praising William Tell: Oh! lady nursed in pomp and pleasure Where learnt thou that heroic measure?