About this story
At the opera you overhear her fashionable guests mock the hospitality they've accepted, and your mother's cousin Grace Nugent will not let you unhear it. Lady Clonbrony waves it off as envy; Grace insists the cost of her performance in London is paid somewhere you have never seen — the family's Irish estate. You go home resolved to learn the cost, and Grace leaves an unopened Irish letter waiting for you.
How it opens
Carriages stalled outside the opera while their owners crowded beneath the chandeliers.
Your mother searched the crush for guests worthy of her approaching London gala.
Lady ClonbronyColambre, do not disappear before I present you to Miss Broadhurst.
Mrs DarevilleLady Clonbrony spends magnificently for a place in rooms that mock her.
Choose
You discuss my mother's hospitality with unusual freedom, madam.
Grace, let us move before courtesy requires an answer.