common to him, "now for my reward. I have danced the first dance with
Lady Margaret Midgecombe: I come, according to your promise, to dance the
second with you."

There was something in these words that stung one of the morbid
remembrances in Miss Vernon's mind. Lady Margaret Midgecombe, in ordinary
life, would have been thought a good-looking, vulgar girl:--she was a
Duke's daughter and she was termed a Hebe. Her little nose, and her fresh
colour, and her silly but not unmalicious laugh, were called enchanting;
and all irregularities of feature and faults of shape were absolutely
turned into merits by that odd commendation, so common with us--"A deuced
fine girl; none of your regular beauties."

Not only in the county of ----shire, but in London, had Lady Margaret
Midgecombe been set up as the rival beauty of Constance Vernon. And
Constance, far too lovely, too cold, too proud, not to acknowledge beauty
in others, where it really existed, was nevertheless unaffectedly
indignant at a comparison so unworthy; she even, at times, despised her
own claims to admiration, since claims so immeasurably inferior could be
put into competition with them. Added to this sore feeling for Lady
Margaret, was one created by Lady Margaret's mother. The Duchess of
Winstoun was a woman of ordinary birth--the daughter of a peer of great
wealth but new family. She had married, however, one of the most powerful
dukes in the peerage;--a stupid, heavy, pompous man, with four castles,
eight parks, a coal-mine, a tin-mine, six boroughs, and about thirty
livings. Inactive and reserved, the duke was seldom seen in public: the
care of supporting his rank devolved on the duchess; and she supported it
with as much solemnity of purpose as if she had been a cheesemonger's
daughter. Stately, insolent, and coarse; asked everywhere; insulting all;
hated and courted; such was the Duchess of Winstoun, and such, perhaps,