Excerpt from Diamond Cut Paste Lady Gertude Esdale rose from the low chair in which she had been desultorily pesuing the Morning Post, and faced her visitors with an air of expectancy which quickly changed to one of supreme astonishment. "Mamma - and Flo! This is a surprise." "Quite a surprise," confirmed the Dowager in her uncompromising bass. She paused in the middle of the room, waiting with a portentous air till the footman should have closed the door. "We came in a meter - a street meter," she then announced, and made an irritable attempt to free her fine old head and her close bonnet from the anomalous wrappings. "We motored down in a taximeter, dear mamma means," amended her companion. "Motored? Mamma - never!" If anything had been further needed to point to the extraordinary momentousness of the occasion, this announcement would have completed it. The Countess of Enniscorthy in a motor! It had not been a thing even to dream of; it was Middle Victorian tradition in the car of progress! "Allow me, mamma," said Lady Florence. Lady Florence Jamieson was the assiduous eldest daughter, who, since her own widowhood, had never left her mother's side. Her filial devotion had become almost proverbial. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.