Augusta did not care a straw for de Tokoly. She continued to brood about Nora. The girl was most vulnerable right now, when everything was unfamiliar and she had not had time to learn upper-class manners. If she could be brought to disgrace herself somehow tonight, preferably in front of the Prince of Wales ...
Just as she was thinking about the prince, a great cheer went up outside the house, indicating that the royal party had arrived.
A moment later the prince and Princess Alexandra came in, dressed as King Arthur and Queen Guinevere, followed by their entourage got up as knights in armor and medieval ladies. The band stopped abruptly in the middle of a Strauss waltz and struck up the national anthem. All the guests in the hall bowed and curtsied, and the queue on the staircase dipped like a wave as the royal party came up. The prince was getting fatter every year, Augusta thought as she curtsied to him. She was not sure whether there was any gray in his beard yet, but he was rapidly going bald on top. She always felt sorry for the pretty princess, who had a great deal to put up with from her spendthrift, philandering husband.
At the top of the stairs, the duke and duchess welcomed their royal guests and ushered them into the ballroom. The guests on the staircase surged forward to follow them.
Inside the long ballroom, masses of flowers from the hothouse at the Tenbigh's country home were banked up all around the walls, and the light from a thousand candles glittered back from the tall mirrors between the windows. The footmen handing round champagne were dressed as Elizabethan courtiers in doublet and hose. The prince and princess were ushered to a dais at the end of the room. It had been arranged that some of the more spectacular costumes should pass in front of the royal party in procession, and as soon as the royals were seated the first group came in from the salon. A crush formed near the dais, and Augusta found herself shoulder-to-shoulder with Count de Tokoly.
"What a delightful girl your nephew's wife is, Mrs. Pilaster," he said.
Augusta gave him a frosty smile. "How generous you are to say so, Count."
He raised an eyebrow. "Do I detect a note of dissent? No doubt you would have preferred young Hugh to choose a bride from his own class."
"You know the answer to that without my telling you."
"But her charm is irresistible."
"Doubtless."
"I shall ask her to dance later on. Do you think she will accept?"
