to her. She was a woman with square jaws, and a big face,
and stout shoulders: but she was not, of her own unassisted height,
very tall. But of that tiara and its altitude she was proud, and as
she stood in the midst of the stalls, brandishing her umbrella-sized
parasol in her anger, the ladies, as they entered, might well be
cowed by her presence.

"When ladies say half-past two," said she, "they ought to come at
half-past two. Where is the Duchess of St Bungay? I shall not wait
for her."

But there was a lady there who had come in behind the Mackenzies,
whom nothing ever cowed. This was the Lady Glencora Palliser, the
great heiress who had married the heir of a great duke, pretty,
saucy, and occasionally intemperate, in whose eyes Lady Ware with her
ferocious tiara was simply an old woman in a ridiculous head-gear.
The countess had apparently addressed herself to Mrs Mackenzie, who
had been the foremost to enter the building, and our Margaret had
already begun to tremble. But Lady Glencora stepped forward, and took
the brunt of the battle upon herself.

"Nobody ever yet was so punctual as my Lady Ware," said Lady
Glencora.

"It is very annoying to be kept waiting on such occasions," said the
countess.

"But my dear Lady Ware, who keeps you waiting? There is your stall,
and why on earth should you stand here and call us all over as we
come in, like naughty schoolboys?"

"The duchess said expressly that she would be here at half-past two."

"Who ever expects the dear duchess to keep her word?" said Lady
Glencora.

"Or whoever cared whether she does or does not?" said Mrs Chaucer
Munro, who, with her peculiar bevy, had now made her way up among the
front rank.

Then to have seen the tiara of Lady Ware, as it wagged and nodded
while she looked at Mrs Munro, and to have witnessed the high
moral tone of the ferocity with which she stalked away to her own
stall with her daughters behind her,--a tragi-comedy which it was
given to no male eyes to behold,--would have been worth the whole
after-performance of the bazaar. No male eyes beheld that scene, as
Mr Manfred Smith, the manager, had gone out to look for his duchess,
and missing her carriage in the crowd, did not return till the bazaar
had been opened. That Mrs Chaucer Munro did not sink, collapsed,
among her bevy, must have been owing altogether to that callousness
which a long habit of endurance produces. Probably she did feel
something as at the moment the