re came no titter from any other bevy
corresponding to the titter which was raised by her own. She and
her bevy retired to their allotted place, conscious that their time
for glory could not come till the male world should appear upon the
scene. But Lady Ware's tiara still wagged and nodded behind her
counter, and Margaret, looking at her, thought that she must have
come there as the grand duenna of the occasion.

Just at three o'clock the poor duchess hurried into the building in
a terrible flurry, and went hither and thither among the stalls, not
knowing at first where was her throne. Unkind chance threw her at
first almost into the booth of Mrs Conway Sparkes, the woman whom of
all women she hated the most; and from thence she recoiled into the
arms of Lady Hartletop who was sitting serene, placid, and contented
in her appointed place.

"Opposite, I think, duchess," Mrs Conway Sparkes had said. "We are
only the small fry here."

"Oh, ah; I beg pardon. They told me the middle, to the left."

"And this is the middle to the right," said Mrs Conway Sparkes. But
the duchess had turned round since she came in, and could not at all
understand where she was.

"Under the canopy, duchess," just whispered Lady Hartletop. Lady
Hartletop was a young woman who knew her right hand from her left
under all circumstances of life, and who never made any mistakes.
The duchess looked up in her confusion to the centre of the ceiling,
but could see no canopy. Lady Hartletop had done all that could
be required of her, and if the duchess were to die amidst her
difficulties it would not be her fault. Then came forth the Lady
Glencora, and with true charity conducted the lady-president to her
chair, just in time to avoid the crush, which ensued upon the opening
of the doors.

The doors were opened, and very speedily the space of the bazaar
between the stalls became too crowded to have admitted the safe
passage of such a woman as the Duchess of St Bungay; but Lady
Glencora, who was less majestic in her size and gait, did not find
herself embarrassed. And now there arose, before the general work of
fleecing the wether lambs had well commenced, a terrible discord, as
of a brass band with broken bassoons, and trumpets all out of order,
from the further end of the building,--a terrible noise of most
unmusical music, such as Bartholomew Fair in its loudest days could
hardly have known. At such a diapason one would have thought that the
tend