Free The Bohemian Girl by Frances Vernon Page A

rather thick black eyebrows which contrasted with her ruddy hair. Her mouth was wide, full and red, too heavy for fashion, and beneath it there was a round cleft chin. She had a white skin with correctly-coloured cheeks, but across the bridge of her nose there were several tiny freckles which nothing could remove. She was sometimes criticised for being a very big girl, Junoesque, statuesque, and decidedly the goddess type, which was an excellent thing in a woman of thirty, but not in a girl of eighteen. Diana did not object to being large as she would have done to being a little slender thing; although occasionally she lacked dancing-partners because shorter men did not like to be seen standing up with her.
    â€˜What’s the time?’ said a small skinny girl with freckles like Diana’s, to her twin sister who was examining a mark on her train.
    â€˜However should I know, Sylvia? Oh, heavens, do look at this. I told you you stepped on it when we were getting into the coach!’
    Her sister was not disturbed. ‘Do you suppose it’s too late for the Queen?’
    â€˜Oh, it can’t be more than half-past two,’ said Diana, who knew them both slightly.
    They turned to her in surprise, then the smaller twin said quite confidingly: ‘I do so hope the Queen won’t have retired by the time we do get to the Presence Room, or the Throne Room, or whatever it is one calls it! Don’t you? Whatever is the point of going through all this, and then not being presented to the Queen herself?’
    â€˜Well, in a way, I rather hope it is the Princess,’ said Diana, ‘because then we’ll simply have to curtsey. I’ve been dreading having to be kissed by the Queen for weeks. I am so big, you see, I’ll have to bend down to her, and it will look very odd. I suppose!’ Talking about it made her feel nervous: she had not been very nervous before.
    â€˜Oh, yes,’ said the small girl. ‘Oh, that doesn’t apply to us, we only have to kiss her hand, don’t we, Mabel?’
    â€˜I suppose your mother’s presenting you, Miss Blentham?’ said the twin with a black mark on her train.
    â€˜Yes. Is yours not?’
    The girl looked at the ceiling. ‘Oh yes. You see, although our cousin Lady Mount Colber has the entrée at Court, she’s been unwell lately, and couldn’t present us although she was to have done so.’
    Her sister said: ‘Yes, we were so looking forward to driving down Constitution Hill! Now I’ll have to marry a Cabinet Minister, or something, if I want to do that!’
    â€˜I’m sorry she’s not well,’ said Diana. ‘I think I was introduced to her only the other day.’
    â€˜Oh, Mrs Lyon, I’ve lost my ticket, my card!’ another girl behind her whispered frantically. ‘I’m sure I’ve lost it!’
    â€˜You gave it to me, my dear, here it is. Now put it in your glove, your left glove – remember you’ll have to remove your right.’
    Lady Blentham, who had been separated from her daughter by the careful pushing of the crowd, pressed gently past this couple and rejoined her. ‘It isn’t altogether elegant, is it, Mamma?’ murmured Diana.
    â€˜No, Diana. Hush,’ Angelina replied, smiling, as they shifted forward into another one of the anterooms, guided by fussing male courtiers.
    Both were thirsty, but otherwise not too uncomfortable. Lady Blentham had insisted on their drinking nothing before setting out from Queen Anne’s Gate: the journey down the Mall had taken over an hour, they had been waiting in the Palace a long time already, and it would be hours more before they were at home and able to use a commode.
    *
    Diana walked forward, with her train at last spread out behind her, thinking of the moment when she would have to step back on it. It was the Queen sitting there, a tiny fat black-and-white old figure with the blue ribbon spread