Was he really so modest after the war and France and everything ?--Victoria wondered in silence.
"It was something red, wasn't it ?" he rejoined vaguely.
"It was scarlet tulle." Mary Byrd, as her mother had once observed, "hadn't an indefinite bone in her body." Then she imparted an additional incident.

"She got it badly torn.

I saw her pinning it up in the dressing-room." "I should have been sorry for her," said Margaret simply; and he felt that he had never in his life been so nearly in love with her.
"Is she pretty ?" asked Mrs.Culpeper, appealing directly to Stephen as a man and an authority.

It was the question the strange woman had put to him in the Square, and ironical mirth seized the young man as he remembered.
"Do you think her pretty, Stephen ?" repeated Margaret, and waited, with an expression of impartial interest, for his reply.
For an instant he hesitated.

Did he think Patty Vetch pretty or not?
"I hardly know," he answered.