There rested the proverbial erumpet in the room. Diana could feel a faint flush creeping back into her cheeks; this time it had little to do with the fact that she fainted in the middle of a society ball. Pray her mother didn't get ahold of her later that night.

Her lips parted as she employed what her brain could work up in its still hazy post-faint state. Should she play along with the wry jest, or ignore it as her father ignored her mother in her diatribes about Diana's station in life? Perhaps cast a sympathetic look to address the former and then comment on the latter? That sounded the best and most safe course of action. "Should any of this reach my mother," she said ruefully. "it will not matter, she'll consider it a slight upon our family's name." An equally rueful chuckle to show her opinion on the matter. Where her mother's concerns lay, she knew the talk would be about the person who had collected her after she'd fainted rather than the actual act of fainting.