had acknowledged,
so Mrs. Grantly had taught herself to believe, that Griselda was
undoubtedly the beauty of the season. Marquises and lords were
already contending for her smiles, and paragraphs had been written in
newspapers as to her profile. It was too hard to be told, after that,
that her daughter had been "quite admired." Such a phrase might suit
a pretty little red-cheeked milkmaid of a girl.

"She cannot, of course, come near your girls in that respect," said
Mrs. Grantly, very quietly. Now the Miss Proudies had not elicited
from the fashionable world any very loud encomiums on their beauty.
Their mother felt the taunt in its fullest force, but she would not
essay to do battle on the present arena. She jotted down the item in
her mind, and kept it over for Barchester and the chapter. Such debts
as those she usually paid on some day, if the means of doing so were
at all within her power. "But there is Miss Dunstable, I declare,"
she said, seeing that that lady had entered the room; and away went
Mrs. Proudie to welcome her distinguished guest.

"And so this is a conversazione, is it?" said that lady, speaking, as
usual, not in a suppressed voice. "Well, I declare, it's very nice.
It means conversation, don't it, Mrs. Proudie?"

"Ha, ha, ha! Miss Dunstable, there is nobody like you, I declare."

"Well, but don't it? and tea and cake? and then, when we're tired of
talking, we go away,--isn't that it?"

"But you must not be tired for these three hours yet."

"Oh, I am never tired of talking; all the world knows that. How do,
bishop? A very nice sort of thing this conversazione, isn't it now?"
The bishop rubbed his hands together and smiled, and said that he
thought it was rather nice.

"Mrs. Proudie is so fortunate in all her little arrangements," said
Miss Dunstable.

"Yes, yes," said the bishop. "I think she is happy in these matters.
I do flatter myself that she is so. Of course, Miss Dunstable, you
are accustomed to things on a much grander scale."

"I! Lord bless you, no! Nobody hates grandeur so much as I do. Of
course I must do as I am told. I must live in a big house, and have
three footmen six feet high. I must have a coachman with a top-heavy
wig, and horses so big that they frighten me. If I did not, I should
be made out a lunatic and declared unable to manage my own affairs.
But as for grandeur, I hate it. I certainly think that I shall have
some of these conversaziones. I wonder whether Mrs.