"What else?" her companion asked, her thin face expressing bewilderment, then a sudden rush of understanding. "Oh, my goodness! You don't mean she divorced him, do you? Whatever for?"

"He beat her," the lady in burgundy replied tersely, leaning her head a trifle closer. "I thought you knew that."

"I did… but really… I mean… Italy, did you say?" Her eyes widened. "I suppose it was worth it… but a terribly bad example. I don't know what the world is coming to!"

"Quite," the first matron agreed. "I shan't let my daughters know of it. It is very unsettling, and it doesn't do to allow girls to be unsettled." She lowered her voice confidentially. "One is far happier if one knows precisely what to expect of life. Rose Blaine just had her ninth, you know. Another boy. They are going to call him Albert, after the Prince."

"Speaking of whom," her friend continued, leaning even closer and moving her skirts absently, "Marian Harvey told me he is looking quite poorly these days, very pasty, you know, quite lost his good complexion, and his figure. Dyspeptic, they say."

"Well, he is a foreigner, you know," the thinner of the two said, nodding as if that explained everything. "He may be our dear Queen's husband, but-oh, you know I do wish she would stay with pink, and not ever that fierce shade of fuchsia She looks hot enough to burst into flames any moment! They say she never ever chooses a thing without taking his advice. Some men are color-blind, I hear. It's that German blood."

"Nonsense!" came the instant retort. "English men can be just as color-blind, if they choose."

Rathbone concealed a smile and moved away. He was well acquainted with the insularity of mind which still regarded the Prince Consort, given that official title three years before, in 1857, as being a foreigner, in spite of the fact that he was so deferred to by the Queen that he was king in all but name. He had a wide reputation for being painfully serious and more than a trifle pompous, not merely given to good works but completely overtaken by them to the point where pleasure of any sort was deeply suspect. Rathbone had met him once and found the experience daunting, and one he did not seek to repeat.