‘Let him think I am beautiful – please let him think I am – beautiful.’
She had never seen the ladies of the Social world in which the Earl moved at Buckingham Palace or at Windsor Castle, but she had read descriptions of them and seen sketches of the Queen and her Ladies-in-Waiting in The Graphic and The Illustrated London News.
She was quite certain that she would look just like Cinderella amongst them, especially in the simple gowns that Nanny had made for her from the cheapest materials obtainable simply because it was all that they could afford.
Now in a gown which seemed to her to be the epitome of fashion, a veil making her look as mysterious as a nymph rising from the mist that lay over the stream in the morning and the diamonds glittering on her head, she felt that the Earl wou
