'Just look at that daughter's sister class of mamma in the
carriage across there,' she continued to Elfride, pointing with
merely a turn of her eye. 'The absorbing self-consciousness of
her position that is shown by her countenance is most humiliating
to a lover of one's country. You would hardly believe, would you,
that members of a Fashionable World, whose professed zero is far
above the highest degree of the humble, could be so ignorant of
the elementary instincts of reticence.'
'How?'
'Why, to bear on their faces, as plainly as on a phylactery, the
inscription, "Do, pray, look at the coronet on my panels."'
'Really, Charlotte,' said the vicar, 'you see as much in faces as
Mr. Puff saw in Lord Burleigh's nod.'
Elfride could not but admire the beauty of her fellow
countrywomen, especially since herself and her own few
acquaintances had always been slightly sunburnt or marked on the
back of the hands by a bramble-scratch at this time of the year.
'And what lovely flowers and leaves they wear in their bonnets!'
she exclaimed.
'Oh yes,' returned Mrs. Swancourt. 'Some of them are even more
striking in colour than any real ones. Look at that beautiful
rose worn by the lady inside the rails. Elegant vine-tendrils
introduced upon the stem as an improvement upon prickles, and all
growing so naturally just over her ear--I say growing advisedly,
for the pink of the petals and the pink of her handsome cheeks are
equally from Nature's hand to the eyes of the most casual
observer.
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