Just as a masque makes her no more subtle than she is without it, it always strikes her that her grandfather hardly needs one to be so ducally opaque. As visibly pleased as she is to see him now, and as much as that small gesture at her elbow warms her — how long had it taken for her to recognise what he had presumed obvious to her? To see his affection in his actions?

She beams when he calls her attention an honour, unfashionably open in her ever-readable, expressive face,

and the way that her red matches Stephen's, that, too, is clear to interpret.

“The interesting sort,” she contributes, of university attention, mentally excluding Lady Clothilde from the statement. “I don't know if you much recall Provost Stark, but he was from the same background,” is not quite correct educationally, but a more tactful way of addressing shared rifter origins in a context where it's just too easy for more open discussion to lure in listeners before she's quite ready for their conversation to be broken up by rubbernecking curiosity.