Lord Brookstone’s establishment was in every way more formal and less delightful whence they had come. Lady Brookstone, unlike the Duchess, proved to be enamoured chiefly of her own imagined consequence, and entirely disdainful of the feelings of nearly everyone else. Toward the Duke and Duchess, she was obsequious and servile. Elizabeth could hardly keep herself from staring, and could not imagine how they could bear such absurdity with patience. She wondered what could be Their Graces’ meaning, by coming to stay for weeks in the company of one at once so ridiculous and unpleasant. Her question was answered in the course of the first day, in the Duchess making the statement, “It was a great change to their pleasure that Lord Brookstone was no longer alive.” Lady Brookstone had understood the comment to mean that the Duchess was being civil in remembering Lord Brookstone to the company. Indeed, it required no great stretch of thought to understand Her Grace to say that the house without Lord Brookstone had lost much of its pleasures and all of its appeal. Whereas Their Graces were the picture of great consequence and a firmness of character which made them civil and obliging to the world, Lady Brookstone’s low birth and fortune prior to her marriage resulted in a small consequence being thoroughly overwhelmed by a large conceit. The good-breeding and amiability of the Duke and Duchess made a contrast with the pretence, airs, and demands for precedence of Her Ladyship all the more striking, and a lesson for all as example to serve as warning.