I am in this room, I feel Victorian, and I am Victorian. When I hear that Russian man's music which is driving everyone crazy just now--well, I feel and I suppose I look different. Here's Meg coming. How well she looks!"

They watched the motor-car draw up outside, and the little business of Lady Margaret Lees's descent carried out in quite the best fashion. A footman stood at the door, a grey-haired butler in plain clothes adventured as far as the bottom step; behind there was just the suggestion of something in livery.

"Yes, Meg's all right," Sir Robert replied. "Jolly good wife she is, too. Why don't you marry, Letty?"

"Perhaps," she laughed, leaning a little towards him, "because I did not go to a certain house party at Raynham Court, three years ago."

"Are you conceited enough," he inquired, "to imagine that I should have chosen you instead of Meg, if you had been there?"Perhaps I should have been a little too young," she admitted.  "Why haven't you a brother, Robert?"
"I don't believe you'd have married him, if I had," he answered bluntly.  "I'm not really your sort, you know."
Lady Margaret swept in, very voluble but a little discursive.
"Isn't this just like Bob!" she exclaimed.  "I believe he always comes here early on purpose to find you alone, Letty!  Who's coming to lunch, please?  And where's dad?"
"Father should be on his way home from the Law Courts by now," Letitia replied, "and I am afraid it's a very dull luncheon for you, Meg.  Aunt Caroline is coming, and an American man she travelled over on the steamer with.  I am not quite sure whether she expects to let Bayfield to him or offer him to me as a husband, but I am sure she has designs."
"The Duchess is always so helpful," Robert grunted.
"So long as it costs her nothing," Lady Margaret declared, "nothing makes her so happy as to put the whole world to rights."
"Here she comes--in a taxicab, too," Sir Robert announced, looking out of the window.  "She is getting positively penurious."
"She is probably showing off before the American," Lady Margaret remarked.  "She is always talking about living in a semi-detached house and making her own clothes.  Up to the present, though, she has stuck to Worth."
The Duchess, who duly arrived a few moments later, brought with her into the room a different and essentially a more cosmopolitan atmosphere.  She was a tall, fair woman, attractive in an odd sort of way, with large features, a delightful smile, and a habit of rapid speech.  She exchanged hasty greetings with every one present and then turned back towards the man who had followed her into the room.

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