"
For in those days certain great houses and political ladies, though not
at the zenith of their power, were still, in their comparative decline,
very much to be reckoned with. When Lady Parham talked longer than usual
with the French Ambassador, his Austrian and German colleagues wrote
anxious despatches to their governments; when a special mission to the
East of great importance had to be arranged, nobody imagined that Lord
Parham had very much to do with the appointment of the commissioner, who
happened to have just engaged himself to Lady Parham's second girl. No
young member on the government side, if he wanted office, neglected
Lady Parham's invitations, and admission to her more intimate dinners
was still almost as much coveted as similar favors had been a generation
before in the case of Lady Jersey, or still earlier, in that of Lady
Holland. She was a small old woman, with a shrewish face, a waxen
complexion, and a brown wig. In spite of short sight, she saw things
that escaped most other people; her tongue was rarely at a loss; she
was, on the whole, a good friend, though never an unreflecting one; and
what she forgave might be safely reckoned as not worth resenting.
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