But the great thing in her was that she was, with unconscious heroism, thoroughly herself; and what were Mrs.Brook and Mrs.Brook's intimates after all, in their free surrender to the play of perception, but a happy association for keeping her so?
The Duchess was moved to the liveliest admiration by the grand simple sweetness of her encounter with Mrs.Donner, a combination indeed in which it was a question if she or Mrs.Brook appeared to the higher advantage.

It was poor Mrs.Donner--not, like Mrs.Brook, subtle in sufficiency, nor, like Lady Fanny, almost too simple--who made the poorest show.

The Duchess immediately marked it to Mitchy as infinitely characteristic that their hostess, instead of letting one of her visitors go, kept them together by some sweet ingenuity and while Lord Petherton, dropping his sister, joined Edward and Aggie in the other angle, sat there between them as if, in pursuance of some awfully clever line of her own, she were holding a hand of each.

Mr.Mitchett of course did justice all round, or at least, as would have seemed from an enquiry he presently made, wished not to fail of it.

"Is it your real impression then that Lady Fanny has serious grounds--" "For jealousy of that preposterous little person?
My dear Mitchett," the Duchess resumed after a moment's reflexion, "if you're so rash as to ask me in any of these connexions for my 'real' impression you deserve whatever you may get." The penalty Mitchy had incurred was apparently grave enough to make his companion just falter in the infliction of it; which gave him the opportunity of replying that the little person was perhaps not more preposterous than any one else, that there was something in her he rather liked, and that there were many different ways in which a woman could be interesting.