"No. That is another change. Mrs. Duff-Scott has withdrawn her gracious favour. She doesn't want him now. She thinks she will make a pair of duchesses of us when she gets us to London, don't you see? Dear woman, I'm afraid she will be grievously disappointed, so far as I am concerned. No, ever since the day you went away--which was the very day that Mr. Westmoreland began to come back--she has given him the cold shoulder. You know _what_ a cold shoulder it can be! There is not a man alive who could stand up against it, except him. But he doesn't care. He can't, or won't, see that he is not wanted. I suppose it doesn't occur to him that _he_ can possibly be unwelcome anywhere. He loafs about the house--he drops on us at Alston and Brown's--he turns up at the theatre--at the Exhibition--at Mullen's--everywhere. We can't escape him. Nelly likes it. If a day passes without her seeing him, she gets quite restless. She is like a horrid schoolboy with a cockroach on a pin--it is her great amusement in life to see him kicking and struggling." "Perhaps she really does care about him, Patty." "Not she. She is just having her revenge--heartless little monkey! I believe she will be a duchess, after all, with a miserable old toothless creature for her husband. It would be no more than she deserves. Oh, Elizabeth!"--suddenly changing her voice from sharps to flats--"how _beautiful_ you do look! Nelly may be a duchess, and so might I, and neither of us would ever beat you for _presence_. I heard Mrs. Duff-Scott the other day congratulating herself that the prettiest of her three daughters were still left to dispose of. I don't believe we are the prettiest, but, if we are, what is mere prettiness compared with having a head set on like yours and a figure like a Greek statue?" Elizabeth had been proceeding with her toilet, in order to have leisure to gossip with her husband when he came up; and now she stood before her long glass in her bridal dress, which had been composed by Mrs. Duff-Scott with an unlimited expenditure of taste and care. The material of it was exceptionally, if not obtrusively, rich--like a thick, dull, soft silk cloth, covered all over with a running pattern of flowers severely conventionalised; and it was made as plain as plain could be, falling straight to her feet in front, and sweeping back in great heavy folds behind, and fitting like a pliant glove to the curves of her lovely shape. Only round the bodice, cut neither low nor high, and round her rather massive elbows, had full ruffles of the lace that was its sole trimming been allowed; and altogether Mrs. Yelverton's strong points were brought out by her costume in a marvellously effective manner.