As Lady Veratrum left us, she remarked casually, 'His Grace will join us at tea.' The door closed, and at the same moment I fell upon the brocaded satin state bed and tore off my hat and gloves like one distraught.
"Hilda," I gasped, "you brought me here, and you must rescue me, for I absolutely decline to drink tea with a duke." "Nonsense, Penelope, don't be absurd," she replied.

"I have never happened to see him myself, and I am a trifle nervous, but it cannot be very terrible, I should think." "Not to you, perhaps, but to me impossible," I said.

"I thought he was in Homburg, or I would never have entered this place.

It is not that I fear nobility.

I could meet Her Majesty the Queen at the Court of St.
James without the slightest flutter of embarrassment, because I know I could trust her not to presume on my defencelessness to enter into conversation with me.