It is to the latter, Kate Kearney, I shall entrust our sweet Lesbia's toilettes.' The same post brought a loving letter from Lesbia, full of regret at not being allowed to go down to Fellside, and yet full of delight at the prospect of her first season.
'Lady Kirkbank and I have been discussing my court dress,' she wrote, 'and we have decided upon a white cut-velvet train, with a border of ostrich feathers, over a satin petticoat embroidered with seed pearl.

It will be expensive, but we know you will not mind that.
Lady Kirkbank takes the idea from the costume Buckingham wore at the Louvre the first time he met Anne of Austria.

Isn't that clever of her?
She is not a deep thinker like you; is horribly ignorant of science, metaphysics, poetry even.

She asked me one day who Plato was, and whether he took his name from the battle of Platoea; and she says she never could understand why people make a fuss about Shakespeare; but she has read all the secret histories and memoirs that ever were written, and knows all the ins and outs of court life and high life for the last three hundred years; and there is not a person in the peerage whose family history she has not at her fingers' ends, except my grandfather.

When I asked her to tell me all about Lord Maulevrier and his achievements as Governor of Madras, she had not a word to say.