In Cadogan Place she could always, at the worst, be picturesque--for she habitually spoke of herself as "local" to Sloane Street whereas at Matcham she should never be anything but horrible.

And it all would have come, the disaster, from the real refinement, in her, of the spirit of friendship.

To prove to him that she wasn't really watching him--ground for which would have been too terribly grave--she had followed him in his pursuit of pleasure: SO she might, precisely, mark her detachment.

This was handsome trouble for her to take--the Prince could see it all: it wasn't a shade of interference that a good-natured man would visit on her.

So he didn't even say, when she told him how frumpy she knew herself, how frumpy her very maid, odiously going back on her, rubbed it into her, night and morning, with unsealed eyes and lips, that she now knew her--he didn't then say "Ah, see what you've done: isn't it rather your own fault ?" He behaved differently altogether: eminently distinguished himself--for she told him she had never seen him so universally distinguished--he yet distinguished her in her obscurity, or in what was worse, her objective absurdity, and frankly invested her with her absolute value, surrounded her with all the importance of her wit.