I Forbid the Banns! — page 264: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

254 “7 FORBID THE BANNS|” the fact of her beauty, or, above all, the fict that she was the best dressed woman at Ashmead. The way she was received on coming among them could not be regarded as cordial. Some of the ladies turned round and deliberately fled before her approach. Others who had been watching her, and plainly talking about her, turned their backs as she came near, and pointed out some object of interest in the distance—possibly an old school friend —to those who were beside them. Others who possessed the advantage of being short-sighted did not stir. They simply raised their pzmce-nez and, with their chins slightly ele- vated, stared at her through the glasses. The coldly crit- ical insolence of these last mentioned people was worthy of the best London society, Julian felt. He knew that such a manifestation could be called for only in an extreme case. A lapse from the straight path of virtue would not have received such criticism, nor would the appearance of a face and figure so much more striking than their own. It was the costume which Mme. John Smith of Regent Street con- sidered her noblest achievement of the season that demanded the most emphatic expression of the contempt of the county. Bertha somewhat disconcerted a few of the ladies who gazed at her through spectacles mounted upon a tortoise- shell handle by laughing pleasantly in their. faces. ‘“They do it so clumsily,’’ she remarked, by no means inaudibly, to Julian. ‘‘They are poor imitations of Mr. Du Maurier’s duchesses. ‘They are playing at /abdleaux vivants, and showing themselves to be clumsy amateurs. Is this your county ?”’ ‘This is the county,’’ said Julian. “It 1s Lord Ashen- thorpe’s county—not mine, thank God.”’ He felt furious. He would not so much have minded the flight of some of the ladies, or the back-turning of others, but the insolent stare through the spectacles with the tortoise-shell handles was to him most exasperating. (COIAAMUCELS 100 jal)