In fact, there was much more reason for anxiety about her than for her anxiety about Sybil, who, barring a little youthful nervousness in the face of responsibility, was as healthy and comfortable a young woman as could be shown in America, and whose sentiment never cost her five minutes' sleep, although her appetite may have become a shade more exacting than before.

Madeleine was quick to notice this, and surprised her cook by making daily and almost hourly demands for new and impossible dishes, which she exhausted a library of cookery-books to discover.
Lord Skye's ball and Sybil's interest in it were a great relief to Madeleine's mind, and she now turned her whole soul to frivolity.

Never, since she was seventeen, had she thought or talked so much about a ball, as now about this ball to the Grand-Duchess.

She wore out her own brain in the effort to amuse Sybil.

She took her to call on the Princess; she would have taken her to call on the Grand Lama had he come to Washington.