"I was telling Lady Glencora, Miss Palliser, that I never knew a house so warm as this,--or, I'm sorry to say,"-- and here the emphasis was very strong on the word sorry,--"so cold as Longroyston." And the tone in which Longroyston was uttered would almost have drawn tears from a critical audience in the pit of a playhouse.

The Duchess was a woman of about forty, very handsome, but with no meaning in her beauty, carrying a good fixed colour in her face, which did not look like paint, but which probably had received some little assistance from art.

She was a well-built, sizeable woman, with good proportions and fine health,--but a fool.

She had addressed herself to one Miss Palliser; but two Miss Pallisers, cousins of Plantagenet Palliser, had entered the room at the same time, of whom I may say, whatever other traits of character they may have possessed, that at any rate they were not fools.
"It's always easy to warm a small house like this," said Miss Palliser, whose Christian names, unfortunately for her, were Iphigenia Theodata, and who by her cousin and sister was called Iphy--"and I suppose equally difficult to warm a large one such as Longroyston." The other Miss Palliser had been christened Euphemia.
"We've got no pipes, Duchess, at any rate," said Lady Glencora; and Alice, as she sat listening, thought she discerned in Lady Glencora's pronunciation of the word pipes an almost hidden imitation of the Duchess's whistle.

It must have been so, for at the moment Lady Glencora's eye met Alice's for an instant, and was then withdrawn, so that Alice was compelled to think that her friend and cousin was not always quite successful in those struggles she made to be proper.
Then the gentlemen came in one after another, and other ladies, till about thirty people were assembled.