Stately, insolent, and coarse; asked everywhere; insulting all; hated and courted; such was the Duchess of Winstoun, and such, perhaps, have been other duchesses before her.
Be it understood that, at that day, Fashion had not risen to the despotism it now enjoys: it took its colouring from Power, not controlled it.

I shall show, indeed, how much of its present condition that Fashion owes to the Heroine of these Memoirs.

The Duchess of Winstoun could not now be that great person she was then: there is a certain good taste in Fashion which repels the mere insolence of flank--which requires persons to be either agreeable, or brilliant, or at least original--which weighs stupid dukes in a righteous balance and finds vulgar duchesses wanting.

But in lack of this new authority this moral sebastocrator between the Sovereign and the dignity hitherto considered next to the Sovereign's--her Grace of Winstoun exercised with impunity the rights of insolence.

She had taken an especial dislike to Constance:--partly because the few good judges of beauty, who care neither for rank nor report, had very unreservedly placed Miss Vernon beyond the reach of all competition with her daughter; and principally, because the high spirit and keen irony of Constance had given more than once to the duchess's effrontery so cutting and so public a check, that she had felt with astonishment and rage there was one woman in that world--that woman too unmarried--who could retort the rudeness of the Duchess of Winstoun.