"Thank Heaven they don't hide their faces!" cried Felix.
"Their faces are uncommonly pretty."
"Yes, their faces are often very pretty," said the Baroness, who was a very clever woman. She was too clever a woman not to be capable of a great deal of just and fine observation.
She clung more closely than usual to her brother's arm; she was not exhilarated, as he was; she said very little, but she noted a great many things and made her reflections.
She was a little excited; she felt that she had indeed come to a strange country, to make her fortune. Superficially, she was conscious of a good deal of irritation and displeasure; the Baroness was a very delicate and fastidious person.
Of old, more than once, she had gone, for entertainment's sake and in brilliant company, to a fair in a provincial town.
It seemed to her now that she was at an enormous fair--that the entertainment and the desagrements were very much the same.
She found herself alternately smiling and shrinking; the show was very curious, but it was probable, from moment to moment, that one would be jostled. The Baroness had never seen so many people walking about before; she had never been so mixed up with people she did not know. But little by little she felt that this fair was a more serious undertaking.
She went with her brother into a large public garden, which seemed very pretty, but where she was surprised at seeing no carriages.