Page:Penelope's Progress.djvu/125

Rh before the Lord High Commissioner and the Marchioness, who, with her Cleopatra-like beauty and scarlet gown, looked like a gorgeous cardinal-flower. Salemina and I watched the curtsying narrowly, with the view at first of improving our own obeisances for Buckingham Palace; but truth to say we got no added light, and plainly most of the people had not worn threadbare the carpets in front of their dressing-mirrors. Suddenly we heard a familiar name announced, "Lord Colquhoun," a distinguished judge who had lately been raised to the peerage, and whom we often met at dinners; then "Miss Rowena Colquhoun;" and then, in the midst, we fancied, of an unusual stir at the entrance door—"Miss Francesca Van Buren Monroe." I involuntarily touched the Reverend Ronald's shoulder in my astonishment, while Salemina lifted her tortoise-shell lorgnette, and we gazed silently at our recreant charge.

After presentation, each person has fifteen or twenty feet of awful space to traverse in solitary and defenseless majesty; scanned meanwhile by the maids of honor (who, if they were truly honorable, would turn their eyes another way), ladies-in-waiting, the sacred group in the rear, and the Purse-Bearer himself. I had supposed that this functionary would keep the purse in his upper bureau drawer at home, when he was not