CHRYSALIS AND THE COUNTESS
Beth had a slight cold so could not go out. Her birthday was
Valentine’s Day and her cousins hinted at some delightfully mysterious
way in which it was to be celebrated and for which she must be
perfectly well, so Beth was nursing her cold in the house, St.
Valentine’s feast--and hers--being but a week distant.
Liebchen and Annunciata had been sent for to spend the afternoon. Both
these children regarded Beth as a sort of distinct order of being,
compounded of equal parts of a good fairy, a dear little girl, an
almost-big girl--for they were both younger than Beth--a grand lady to
admire, a warm-hearted friend to love, and they proceeded to love her
in the combined ways and to the degree all these sides demanded.
When there was a chance amid her whirl of pleasures, Beth was allowed
to ask her worshipers to visit her. They had come to-day and Beth was
romping with them as she never could romp with Natalie and Alys. When
they went home there would be gifts for them, pretty ribbons, some
candy, a toy or two and perhaps a simple, pretty little frock. The
consciousness of this possibility, based on past experiences, added no
little to Liebchen’s and Annunciata’s enjoyment of the frolic while
they were with Beth.
Dirk had joined Beth and her guests and Beth had suggested and directed
a new play. Liebchen and Annunciata did not understand it, but it
necessitated dressing up so it did not matter why they had to do this
always agreeable thing. Dirk did not enter far into Beth’s enthusiasm
for the game, but, as he said, he “made a stagger at playing it,” and
Beth’s imagination did not need much fuel to feed its flames.
“I shall be Mary, Queen of Scots,” she elucidated. “You will be the
faithful Douglas, Dirk, who adores her and tries to make her life
in prison less miserable. Liebchen and Annunciata must be the four
Maries--I mean two of the queen’s Maries. They were her ladies in
waiting, you know.”
“Switched if I do!” declared Dirk. “Where do you get all this stuff,
Beth? History?”
“Well, not plain history,” admitted Beth. “I just love the Border
Ballads and all those things. And ‘The Abbot,’ you know, one of the
Waverley novels, is all about Queen Mary; I’ve read it and read it!
I play I’m Mary Queen of Scots half the time at home. Janie can’t
stand the Waverley novels; I looked over some I don’t care about,
either. But ‘The Abbot’ and ‘Kenilworth’ and ‘Ivanhoe’ and ‘The
Talisman’--goodness, Dirk, I should think you’d love them! I like ‘Guy
Mannering,’ too. Janie plays I’m Mary Stuart at Lochleven Castle pretty
nicely, though. I’ve just _made_ her listen to the best parts of ‘The
Abbot,’ so she could. She has to be Catharine Seyton, of course. When
she puts her arm through the bolt place to fasten the door--oh! Well,
we must play now. I’ll tell you what to say and do. You don’t have to
dress up much----”
“I’m not going to dress up at all.” Dirk decided that at once.
“I suppose your suit would answer,” said Beth doubtfully; she
recognized Dirk’s determination and that she should lose his support
unless she compromised. “Knickerbockers and a jacket are something like
trunks and a doublet. All right; you stay as you are. But Liebchen and
Annunciata must have long trained skirts and head-dresses and some
jewels; not many, because the queen could not give them much when she
was in misfortune. You wait here, Dirk, and I’ll take them to my room
to fix up. Aunt Alida gave me perfectly magnificent robes of state to
dress up in, old silk dresses of hers. We’ll be back soon.”
Beth hurried her two attendants away before her and presently they all
returned, splendid to behold in their finery.
Liebchen wore a blue moiré silk skirt that not merely trailed behind
her, but was so long in front that it had to be looped up through a
girdle around her hips, and this gave her quite the effect of a lady
of the period which she represented. Annunciata wore a yellow gown,
equally too long for her, equally puffy around her hips. Both had
head-dresses with feathers and jewels, both were decked with chains and
each carried a fan--merely as a touch of vague elegance. Beth, as the
hapless queen, wore a royal robe of purple velvet and a cap of lavender
with a long white veil flowing down her shoulders. Her head-dress came
down in a point in the middle of her forehead so that there, at least,
she looked like the portraits of Mary Stuart and a clever person might
guess whom she represented.
“Gracious! You do look like I don’t know what!” exclaimed Dirk
candidly. “I don’t blame whoever it was that did it for putting you
into prison, if there wasn’t any asylum those days! Now what do you
do--what’s the game, after you get togged out?”
Beth looked a little troubled; Dirk had laid his finger on the weak
spot in these imaginative plays of hers. Nothing actual ever came of
the dressing up; it all depended on how much the players could get out
of feeling their parts.
“Why, I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I think the captive queen had
better walk about her prison, under the guard of George Douglas--that’s
you. We can go through the house--nobody’s around--and pretend it’s
Lochleven Castle. My ladies in waiting will walk behind me and
sometimes I shall invite one or the other to take her place at my side.
We’ll come back up-stairs afterward and they will sing, I guess. The
queen’s ladies sang a good deal while she embroidered, or wrote Latin
prayers, or French poetry.”
“Well, if that isn’t a lively game!” cried Dirk with a shout of
laughter. “The queen must have had some head if she could write prayers
and poetry in two languages with people singing around her. If a bunch
of girls sang I think I see what my Latin and French exercises would
look like! Well, come on, if you’re going to promenade! Come on;
queen’s move! Bob Leonard’s been teaching me chess.”
Beth preceded down the hall, her step stately, her carriage aimed to
convey dignity, resignation and suffering. She felt that she actually
was the imprisoned queen and her eyes glowed with inward light as she
dwelt upon her misfortunes, a royal prisoner in this lonely northern
island castle, with hope fading day by day. She managed to overlook the
awkwardness of her ladies in their looped up gowns, even the schoolboy
suit of “George Douglas,” which distressed her till she forcibly
banished it from her mind.
The funny little cavalcade proceeded down to the lower hall and lifted
the curtain of the library door. Here the queen felt that she should
find the setting most like the dark castle of her imagination. “George
Douglas” held the leather curtain back for her and her attendants to
pass through.
To the children’s horror there sat at the further end of the room,
facing the door beside a tea wagon and a small table with an alcohol
kettle boiling upon it, Aunt Alida and a lady whom Beth and Dirk
thought they had never seen before. This lady laughed at the apparition
in the doorway and Aunt Alida smiled reassuringly to Beth.
“No harm done, Beth dear. Come in, please. Evidently you did not know
I was at home. Come and show us your costumes. To whom have I the honor
of speaking? I see it is not Beth Bristead,” said Aunt Alida, holding
out an inviting hand.
Beth came forward shyly, but smiling as she saw sympathy and
understanding in the stranger’s beautiful blue eyes. She was not
precisely pretty; beside Aunt Alida’s brilliant beauty she looked
almost plain. But her eyes were lovely, her bearing graceful and
refined. Beth decided on the spot that she was “nice,” and that she
need not mind being seen by this unknown lady in her costume.
“We were playing that I was Mary, Queen of Scots, Aunt Alida,” said
Beth. “Liebchen and Annunciata are ladies in waiting. Dirk is George
Douglas, only he wouldn’t dress up. Out of ‘The Abbot,’ you know.”
“Oh, really!” exclaimed Aunt Alida’s guest with an accent so
unmistakably English that Beth recognized it. “How delightful to find
children enjoying Sir Walter Scott! My little girl and boys won’t read
an older classic than Kipling and Barrie. Will you present me to her
majesty, Mrs. Cortlandt, please?”
“In real life this is my husband’s niece, Elizabeth Bristead, my only
son, Dirk, and two protégées of Beth’s. But now--Lady Harrowdene,
I present you to her majesty, the Queen of Scotland. Queen Mary,
graciously receive Lady Caroline Patricia, Countess of Harrowdene.”
Aunt Alida arose to make the presentation and her guest also arose,
making the profound courtesy required in a court presentation, her eyes
laughing into Beth’s with a look half maternal, half a playmate’s.
Beth caught her breath, her eyes widened in terror; she glanced at Aunt
Alida to discover whether this introduction was part of a play, too.
She remembered that Frieda had said that titled ladies came from across
the sea in winter and were entertained by her aunt and uncle, and Aunt
Alida did not seem to her to be making believe that her guest was a
noble lady. But it seemed quite impossible to Beth that a countess
should be present in the flesh, outside the pages of romance.
Lady Harrowdene bent her head respectfully and said: “Your majesty,
I rejoice to see that you are bearing so well the weary months and
years of your captivity. Though I am English, I am heart and soul your
slave, in spite of the circumstances which force me to live in the land
reigned over by Elizabeth.”
“Why don’t you say something?” Dirk whispered with a vigorous nudge. He
had great pride in Beth’s flow of antique-sounding phrases which she
usually employed in making believe.
“Are you really a--a countess?” Beth asked, staring wide-eyed at Lady
Harrowdene when she was thus goaded to speak.
Lady Harrowdene laughed delightedly. “You funny little thing!” she
cried. “Is that what is the trouble? Shall we stop playing Queen Mary
and her attendants and talk in our proper persons? Thank you; making
believe is a bit hard to keep up long. I think my title is all right.
Why do you question it? My husband is Lord William Bellair, Earl of
Harrowdene. Doesn’t that make me a countess, quite securely?”
“Yes, ma’am. Yes, my lady. I don’t know even how to say yes to a
countess! I didn’t really believe there were countesses and earls, not
_feel_ I believed them, till this minute!” cried Beth in a burst of a
sort of despair of meeting this occasion properly.
Lady Harrowdene laughed so heartily that the tears sprang to her eyes.
“Why do you care so much about them, my dear? Aren’t you a true little
American republican, believing--what is it that your Declaration of
Independence says? That all men are created equal? Why, then, do you
care about a title?” cried this merry countess when she recovered her
breath.
“It’s not that,” Beth tried bravely to explain. “It’s not the way
the Declaration meant, I care. It’s--it’s so strange, because you
read about earls and countesses in books and they always seem
so--interesting. Almost like fairies, only nicer, I think. And it
doesn’t seem as though they could be just going around now. Are your
children earls and countesses?”
“My oldest boy will be Harrowdene some day. My girl--she’s not as
old as you are--is the Honorable Constantia Bellair, because her
father is an earl. We call her Con, Connie, usually, quite as you are
called Beth. It really doesn’t matter about these things as much as
you fancy, my dear. I see, though, that it is the romance of it that
appeals to you, not the worldly side of noble birth. But I assure you
we are not particularly romantic, though I fancy you’d find plenty to
enthrall your dreaming little soul in the fine old Elizabethan house
at Harrowdene. One day you must see it, when your aunt comes over to
return my visit of to-day and brings your lovely cousins, as she has
promised to do. They used to call me Honorable Pat, Beth, before I was
married, because my father was also an earl. Now they call me Lady Pat,
and my husband makes stupid jokes on my name, all about his Pat-ent
wife; what a frightful wound he got when my father gave him a Pat--and
all that sort of thing, don’t you know? But this is when we are quite
in private and it doesn’t matter! I only mention it to show you that an
earl is quite merely a mere man! By the way, my dear, an ancestor of
mine, on my mother’s side, was one of the noblemen selected to witness
the execution of poor Mary Stuart. Pray don’t set that down against me;
I’m sure I should have tried to rescue her had I been in his place!”
Lady Harrowdene had talked on, evidently to set Beth at her ease, and
to accustom her to the shock of meeting English historical romances
clothed in flesh, which she saw was much the way in which Beth regarded
her.
The little girl had listened, enthralled. Lady Harrowdene’s beautiful
voice, her inflections, so different from those she had always heard,
made of the tongue they both spoke something so unlike its old self, so
attractively unlike it, that Beth could have listened forever, even had
not what Lady Harrowdene said been so interesting.
“Don’t be too disappointed, dear, that I am just an every-day twentieth
century woman and not a splendid creature of Queen Elizabeth’s court!”
Lady Patricia leaned toward Beth with the motherly look in her eyes,
and Beth went over to her at once.
“The daughter of a thousand earls, belted earls!” she murmured.
Aunt Alida and Lady Patricia dissolved in merriment at this, and Lady
Patricia hugged Beth vehemently.
“You dear, funny little creature!” she cried. “I give you my word that
I never had a thousand earls for a father in my life! And I’m quite
sure my father never wore a belt, except when he was playing tennis.
If it gives you satisfaction to think of me as a countess, pray keep
it well in mind. But if it is going to raise a barrier against our
intimacy, then please consider me only as the mother of five little
English people, Herbert, Richard, Constantia, Gilbert, and my rosy,
jolly baby James William. I had to keep up the family names and poor
Jamie took both his grandfather’s and his father’s! You would love
Jamie, Beth. He is nearly two years old. While I am away from him he
tugs at my heart-strings like a particularly strong Atlantic cable.
Dirk, dear, Beth and I are doing all the talking! You were but a little
lad when I was last over; I remember you, but you will not remember me.”
“Yes, I do now, Lady Harrowdene,” said Dirk. “You had the greatest
little terrier I ever saw.”
“I had, truly,” said Lady Harrowdene, greatly pleased. “He’s still
the greatest little dog in England. The children will not allow him to
leave them; he’s waiting my return with the rest of my family. You are
all going to see him when you go over. He will do tricks for you, fall
over dead, stand erect and salute at ‘God save the king,’ join in the
chorus with barks when he’s bidden--he has really quite a repertory
of accomplishments! I shall be glad to introduce you to Briton when
you come to visit me, and that must not be later than the summer after
next. Now then, Alida, are you ever going to tell them? If you don’t I
shall.”
“Do you think it’s fair to blame me for delay, Pat, dear? There has
been no lull in the conversation!” returned Aunt Alida.
Beth noticed with surprise this intimate use of first names; she
wondered when Aunt Alida had come to know so well this lady, separated
from her by the width of the Atlantic.
“Beth, you are to be given a birthday party! It must also be a
Valentine party, as you are a Valentine child. I had planned to
celebrate you, but Lady Harrowdene has a Valentine-birthday idea that
puts mine quite in the shade! It will---- Oh, Lady Pat, I believe I
will not tell her about it, after all! It is a week distant. We’ll let
Beth get gray and ugly puzzling over it; we won’t tell her another
syllable than that she is to have a party!” Aunt Alida stopped herself
short and laughed at Beth with her flashing dark eyes.
Beth did not grow gray, nor did she seem to those that loved her in
the least likelihood of becoming ugly as the week before her birthday
crawled past. But she gave a great deal of thought to the celebration
of the day. So did Natalie and Alys; Dirk professed indifference to
all parties, but secretly he speculated, too, on what new form this
celebration could take. Mrs. Cortlandt would not give either of her own
children the least hint about it, for fear Beth should hear it; they
all rightly thought that Mrs. Cortlandt was having a fine time keeping
the mystery shrouded.
St. Valentine’s day came at last. Early in the afternoon Frieda attired
Beth in the strangest costume! Beth did not know whether to like it
or not; she certainly had the gravest doubt of its suitability. Yet
Aunt Alida always knew, not merely what was pretty, but what was
appropriate. This gown was blue, light blue in its upper part, dark
blue below, and it had velvet stripes of yellow bordering its tunic and
rings of yellow velvet on the skirt. The material was the gauziest silk
imaginable; everything about the frock was exquisite, but the effect
altogether was, as Beth doubtfully told herself, “queer.” However,
she could not voice her doubt and in a moment Frieda had slipped over
the whole costume a straight, sheathing sort of a dull yellow silken
garment, like a scant raincoat. It had a yellow silk hood which Frieda
drew forward over Beth’s hair, carefully arranging it so that the
whalebones in it lay so that they would keep the hood from disarranging
her hair.
“For pity’s sake, Frieda, what is it? It makes me look like a big
chrysalis!” cried Beth, surveying her sleek gray figure in the glass
with disfavor.
Frieda clapped her hands. “Isn’t that fine, Miss Beth!” she cried.
“Just what it’s meant to look like! And to think you knew it at once!”
“Well, my goodness! I don’t want to be a chrysalis!” cried Beth. Then
she remembered and felt ashamed. “But Aunt Alida knows,” she added
loyally. “Anyhow, I should think she’d made you look nice often enough,
Beth Bristead, for you to wear what she wanted you to! Maybe Aunt Alida
wants me to be a chrysalis to eat salad! Am I ready, Frieda?”
“Yes, Miss Beth, you are. I’m to go with you to help you and your
cousins,” said Frieda, making sure that her black gown and white linen
cap and apron were as they should be.
“Going with us? Are we going somewhere, Frieda?” cried Beth.
But Frieda put her finger on her lip and shook her head to say that she
must not tell Beth anything, even at this late hour, and, taking her
coat, Frieda led the way to the elevator and put Beth in.
Down-stairs Beth found three other figures swathed like herself in
scant dull yellow silk--Natalie, Alys and Dirk. She stared, then began
to take a more hopeful view of the queer costume. If there were so many
copies of it they must have some fine purpose.
“All ready?” asked Aunt Alida, hastening out from the reception room
where she had waited for her flock. Beth saw that she was clad in
beauty unconcealed, so the cocoon-like sheath was not for her.
“Léon is at the door, children!” cried Aunt Alida, as always,
refreshingly excited and happy in the prospect of pleasure for the
children.
She led the way to the car, put the three girls in the back seat, took
Dirk with her in the middle seats, Frieda took her place beside Léon
and they were off.
They drove circuitously, from street to street, from Fifth Avenue
to Madison Avenue, in the blocks which lay between, and everywhere
they were joined by other cars, each containing one or more of the
mysterious silk-clad figures, wearing exactly the same long, dull silk
enveloping coats which Beth and her cousins wore. These cars fell in
line with the Cortlandt car till they had a lengthy procession of
various cars, all carrying human chrysalides. Everybody they passed
stared, but that did not matter. Most people smiled at the procession,
recognizing it as a children’s party of some sort.
The line of motors stopped in turn under the porte-cochère of one of
the most splendid hotels in the city and each discharged its burden of
guests and maids. The party was met by a preternaturally tall person in
quiet livery who said:
“Lady Harrowdene’s party? Thank you, madam. This way if you please,”
and conducted Mrs. Cortlandt and all her dull silken followers to
elevators which took them up to the second floor, where they were led
by the tall man who looked, Natalie whispered, “like the Washington
monument,” to a room opening out of a ballroom in which the children
heard violins tuning.
“Her ladyship is here, Mrs. Cortlandt,” said the tall man throwing open
the door. Then he bowed low and withdrew.
Lady Harrowdene came rapidly forward to meet them. “So glad you are
come at last!” she said. “Oh, no, you are not late, Alida, but I was a
bit early and waiting was tedious. How beautifully you have carried out
the idea! Aren’t they charming, the chrysalis-girls? Please present me
to my--and your--guests.”
One by one Mrs. Cortlandt introduced the young people, girls and boys,
to Lady Harrowdene. Beth thus knew for the first time who were invited
to her birthday party; she found that they were the Tanagers and
Bluebirds and the other young people whom she had met, her cousins’
friends. This did not lessen her shyness. Beth had never made the least
progress in acquaintanceship outside her family that winter, and now
the fear of what might be required of her at a party given in her honor
oppressed her.
Aunt Alida must have known this for she announced:
“This is Beth’s party, but she is as much in the dark in regard to it
as any of you. Lady Harrowdene has surprises for you all, so you are to
consider her as your hostess and Beth as a sort of Appendix Hostess. We
are all under Lady Harrowdene’s orders.”
“Very well, then,” began Lady Harrowdene, accepting her
responsibility; “you must know that you are each to consider yourself
a chrysalis, if you please! You did not know why you were bidden wear
that yellow silk covering, but this is the reason: you are each a
chrysalis. Now, we are to repair to the dancing room, each chrysalis
when it--‘it’ is surely the correct word for a chrysalis!--when it is
ready.”
She led the way, a dazzling apparition in white and green. Beth saw
with unspeakable joy that she wore on her hair something that must have
been a coronet! What rapture it gave her to know that her hostess, Beth
Bristead’s hostess at her birthday party, rightfully wore a countess’s
coronet!
“‘Kind hearts are more than coronets
And simple faith than Norman blood,’”
she said to her own great dismay, and not because that was what she was
thinking, but because Lady Harrowdene’s coronet put the words on her
tongue. She was horrified when a girl at her elbow heard her quotation
and laughed.
The ballroom was beautiful with flowers, the orchestra was playing
irresistible dance music as the chrysalides slid, in their quiet dull
color, into the brilliant light. The daylight was excluded by heavy
screens and the electric candles turned the February afternoon into
night.
In a moment every chrysalis was dancing and they danced for an hour.
Then the music died away into the faintest echo and the chrysalides
stopped dancing, wondering what was to happen.
A curtain concealing a stage at the end of the long room was withdrawn
by invisible hands and upon this stage flitted fairy figures, so
beautiful, so fairylike, as they half danced, half flew on the
invisible wires across the stage, that Beth caught her breath in
delight, so keen that it overwhelmed her.
The fairies--in reality they were professional dancers hired by Lady
Harrowdene--began a dance that seemed to call upon nature to awaken; it
was a Dance of Spring. With exquisite threadings of wind-blown mazes
they flitted, calling, hand to lips. Then they poised, listening, one
hand on hip, one at the ear, as the dancers leaned forward to hear if
their summons were heeded. Then they bent their graceful bodies low to
earth, lightly touching the ground. Then they sprang up with fawn-like
leaps, triumphing, the flowers which they had wakened and culled waving
in their hands above their heads. And finally they came to the front
of the stage, lips parted as if calling, waving their arms, extending
their hands, fluttering, waiting expectant, never still, yet waiting.
Natalie had been coached by Lady Harrowdene what to do. She stood at
the head of a long double row of chrysalides. At a signal from her each
chrysalis fell off and the boys and girls appeared in gorgeous colors.
At last Beth understood her gown of blues with the yellow velvet
stripes! She was a butterfly, they were each a butterfly, broken out of
a chrysalis, Natalie in gold, Alys in green, Dirk in browns and golds,
all the young guests in color combinations incredibly beautiful.
Natalie began to swing in time with the slow dancing on the stage; the
entire line of newly-emerged butterflies swung with her and followed
her as she broke into a dance. She led them around the room, dancing
as only Natalie could dance, improvising her steps and motions. The
professional dancers came down and danced with the children till,
finally, the line broke up into pairs and, all over the room, the
butterflies were waltzing, a sight so beautiful that, as Mrs. Cortlandt
said, it was the greatest pity that all the world could not be there to
see.
Then, as if Lady Harrowdene were in command of genii, the servants of
the hotel slipped into the room and began to serve refreshments. Aunt
Alida had attended to the selection of these, as more versed in what
these American birthday guests would prefer than Lady Harrowdene was.
All the edibles were valentines! Heart-shaped sandwiches, as well as
cakes; salads served in lacy paper, like old-fashioned valentines;
pâtés also lace-trimmed and heart-decorated; fancy ices in valentine
forms; sweets in pairs of love birds; chocolate in heart cups, its
whipped cream carrying out the old-fashioned valentine effect of lace
paper.
Somehow Beth found herself at the head of the central one of the
small tables which Lady Harrowdene’s genii had swiftly and noiselessly
set in place and covered with good things. To her table they bore a
huge valentine cake, decorated with all sorts of icing designs in the
valentine style, ringed around with eleven candles burning steadily.
Beth had to rise and cut the cake. She was so embarrassed that she
could only make the first incision, from which custom forbade her being
excused. Aunt Alida rescued her after that and cut the birthday cake
into slices herself.
“You are to sit still, Beth, please,” Lady Harrowdene said, signaling
to the servants when the supper was over.
Just as swiftly and silently as they had brought them, the men bore
the tables away, all but the centre one on which Beth’s birthday cake
stood and at which Beth herself was left, a solitary island entirely
surrounded by guests and shyness.
The orchestra, which had been playing beautiful soft music during the
supper, played a waltz. The butterflies once more spread their wings,
figuratively speaking, and danced. As they whirled around and past
Beth each butterfly dropped into the lap of this one little motionless
butterfly a package, tied with gay ribbons, decked with birthday cards
and flowers, till the small table was heaped and the small recipient
was nearly overcome.
“‘Please don’t open till Christmas,’ not till you get home at any
rate!” cried Alys. “Come and dance, Bethie, for it will soon be over
and this music is heavenly.”
It was; Beth thought so. Aunt Rebecca would have been surprised if she
could have seen her little grandniece dancing, for Beth had acquired
the accomplishment only this winter and was fond of it with all her
musical heart.
“The clock strikes twelve, Cinderella!” warned Lady Harrowdene. “Dear
guests, my party is over. I’m sorry and I hope you are.”
“It was the nicest party we ever had, Lady Harrowdene,” declared one of
the Tanager girls. “If you have parties like this in England I’m going
to live there as soon as I come of age.”
Beth came home excited, tired, but in a dream of bliss. The party had
seemed like a dream, but the proof of its reality was the snow of white
packages completely covering the floor of the tonneau of the car.
“Well, sir,” exclaimed Dirk, speaking out of a long silence on the way
home, “she’s a countess that counts!”
And Natalie, Alys and Beth enthusiastically agreed.