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. Spiteful, however, and numerous were the things she
said of Miss Vernon, when Miss Vernon was absent; and haughty beyond
measure were the inclination of her head and the tone of her voice when
Miss Vernon was present. If, therefore, Constance was disliked by the
duchess, we may readily believe that she returned the dislike. The very
name roused her spleen and her pride; and it was with a feeling all a
woman's, though scarcely feminine in the amiable sense of the word, that
she learned to whom the honour of Lord Erpingham's precedence had been
(though necessarily) given.