The design was taking shape when young Strangeways, who was willing
to exchange chaff with Gussie Moy, but was gentleman enough to feel
the indecorum of the whole thing, moved across to his sister, and
muttered, "I say, Con, they are getting up that stupid trick of
election of a queen of beauty. Does Lady Tyrrell know it?"
"Wouldn't it be rather fun?"
"Horrid bad form, downright impudence. Mother would squash it at
once. Go and warn one of them," signing with his head.
Constance made her way to Eleonora, who had already been perplexed
and angered by more than one critical stare, as one and another man
loitered past and gazed intrepidly at her. She hurried at once to
her sister, who was sitting passively behind her counter as if
wearied out, and who would not be stirred to interference. "Never
mind, Lenore, it can't be helped. It is all for the cause, and to
stop it would be worse taste, fitting on the cap as an acknowledged
beauty, and to that I'm not equal."
"It is an insult."
"Never fear, they'll never choose you while you look so forbidding,
though perhaps it is rather becoming.
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