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short-sleeved black dress was enlivened by the blue ribbon of the Garter and by her many sparkling jewels: the diamond orders and decorations on her corsage, the rows of pearls about her neck, the rings on her podgy fingers and the small diamond crown on her head. It seemed almost unbelievable that someone so small and plump could look so awe-inspiring. 'I was thrilled with emotion, loyalty and pride,' 9 enthuses Lillie.
    Her mind filled with stories of misadventures – of fat women over-balancing as they made their obeisances, of others tripping over their trains or clutching the outstretched royal hand for support – Lillie sank into her curtsey. The Queen seemed to show no interest in her whatsoever. Extending her hand in a 'rather perfunctory manner', Victoria stared straight ahead. 'Not even a flicker of a smile crossed her grimly set lips.' 10
    That ordeal over, Lillie dropped a series of curtseys to the other members of the royal family – including a no doubt beaming Prince of Wales – lined up beside the Queen, and then faced her final test. This was the catching of her train, thrown to her by a nimble page, over her left arm and then exiting backwards. She executed this complicated ritual perfectly.
    That evening, as a relieved Lillie danced with Bertie in the Royal Quadrille at a ball at Marlborough House, he confirmed that the Queen had remained so late expressly in order to see her. What, wondered Lillie, had the Queen thought of her three outsize ostrich feathers? The Prince had certainly been amused by them. Perhaps he appreciated their symbolism. Were they not a reminder of his own coat of arms, with the accompanying motto
Ich dien –
I serve?
    Lillie just missed an opportunity of meeting Queen Victoria socially later that year when the royal family descended,
en masse
, on Scotland for their annual autumn sojourn. With the Queen and some of her family at Balmoral and the Prince and Princess of Wales at Abergeldie, it was arranged that the Langtrys should be the guests of one of the Prince's friends, the 'commercial magnate' Cunliffe Brooks, at Glen Tanar. Although Lillie could not approve of the mass slaughter of game which so enthralled the men of the house party, she loved Scotland. She was not the first southerner to succumb to the fascination of the Highlands: the colourful national dress, the vigorousdancing, the virile men, even the determined drizzle guaranteed, she says, 'to bring roses to a woman's cheeks'. 11
    In his Stuart tartan ('Something a little more
Scots
tomorrow,' 12 the Prince would instruct his valet as the ship bringing him north approached the Scottish coast) even Bertie managed to look somewhat less Hanoverian. As for Alexandra, Lillie had to admit that she looked as radiant in her 'blue serge workmanlike costume' 13 and deerstalker cap as she did in one of her shimmering court dresses.
    One afternoon, accompanied by two other members of the house party – Lord Strathnairn and Lady Erroll – the Langtrys drove over to Balmoral. Designed by the late Prince Consort, Balmoral Castle is a mixture of German Schloss and Scottish baronial hall: a jumble of pepper-pot turrets, crenellated parapets and stepped gables. Lillie, who had never seen it before (and was never to see it again) found it 'bleak and uninteresting', utterly lacking in the romance of Scotland's older, less
ersatz
castles.
    The party had not come, of course, to call on Queen Victoria (no one would have dared do that, uninvited; and invitations to call on the Queen were rare) but to pay their respects by signing their names in the visitors' book. Lillie hesitated to do even this, imagining that it would be an act of presumption. But Lady Erroll assured her that, as Lillie had been presented to the Queen earlier that year, it would be perfectly proper, indeed imperative, for her to sign. So they duly wrote their names and left.
    Later, Lillie heard from Lady Ely, one of Queen Victoria's ladies-in-waiting, that some