Valeda felt it was a mistake to discuss her employer with one of the servants, but Betty chatted on,
“You should’ve seen the mistress goin’ down to dinner. Looking beautiful, she was. She ’ad on a new gown of pale green, sparklin’ all over with sequins and emeralds round her neck.”
“It sounds very grand,” Valeda managed to say.
“I ’spects her Ladyship and the gentleman as is here for dinner will go on to a ball,” Betty said with relish. “That’s wot her lady’s maid thought they’d be doing because her Ladyship was wearin’ her emerald tiara.”
Valeda could not help wondering what she would have felt if, just for one night, Hermione had offered to take her as her sister to a ball in London.
It was something her mother had often talked about after Hermione had married.
“It is the luckiest
