ll never
be anything but a third-rate duchess, and people that tolerate her now
will snub her the moment she gives herself airs. But I suppose she
thinks a duchess is a duchess."

"Money goes pretty far with us," said Lady Victoria, dryly.

"Doesn't it? Nevertheless--you know it as well as I do--among the people
that really count other things go further, and duchesses have been put
in their place before this--you have done it yourself. Julia Kaye has
kept her head so far because she has been hunting for strawberry leaves,
and there is no denying she's clever; but once she is in the upper
air--well, I have seen her as rude as she dares be, and if she became a
duchess she would cultivate rudeness as part of the role."

"We can be rude enough."

"Yes, and know how to be. A parvenu never does."

"She is astonishingly clever."

"Duchesses are born--even the American ones. Julia Kaye has never
succeeded in being quite natural; she has always the effect of
rehearsing the part of the great lady for amateur theatricals. Poor
Gussy Kaye might have coached her better. The moment she mounts she'll
become wholly artificial, she'll patronize, she'll give herself no end
of ridiculous airs; she won't move without sending a paragraph to the
_Morning Post_. The back of her head will be quite in line with her
charming little bust, and I for one shall walk round and laugh in her
face. She is the only person that could inspire me to such a vicious
speech, but I am human, and as she so ingenuously snubs me as a person
of no consequence, my undazzled eyes see her as she is."

Lady Victoria, instead of responding with the faint, absent, somewhat
irritating smile which she commonly vouchsafed those that sought to
amuse her, lit another cigarette and leaned back among the cushions of
the sofa behind the tea-table. She drew her eyelids together, a rare
sign of perturbation. The only stigma of time on her face was a certain
sharpness of outline and leanness of throat. But the throat was always
covered, and her wardrobe reflected the most fleeting of the fashions,
assuring her position as a contemporary, if driving her dressmaker to
the verge of bankruptcy. When her bright, black, often laughing eyes
were in play she passed with the casual public, and abroad, as a woman
of thirty, but with her lids down the sharpness of the lower part of the
face arrested the lover of detail.

"Are you sure of that?" she asked, in a moment.

"Quite."