She was a lady still very young, having as yet been little more than two years married.

But in those two years her triumphs had been many;--so many, that in the great world her standing already equalled that of her celebrated mother-in-law, the Marchioness of Hartletop, who, for twenty years, had owned no greater potentate than herself in the realms of fashion.

But Lady Dumbello was every inch as great as she; and men said, and women also, that the daughter-in-law would soon be the greater.
"I'll be hanged if I can understand how she does it," a certain noble peer had once said to Crosbie, standing at the door of Sebright's, during the latter days of the last season.

"She never says anything to any one.

She won't speak ten words a whole night through." "I don't think she has an idea in her head," said Crosbie.
"Let me tell you that she must be a very clever woman," continued the noble peer.