Patience still listened to gossip even if she didn’t partake in it anymore. After all, not listening would be rude and more than that would leave her without the most important thing any socialite ever had – knowledge. Oh, you didn’t need books or anything so boring as that but knowing who was who and what they did and who they went around with – on such important things were marriages and empires formed.
And she was quite surprised to hear that there was an Italian aristocrat and her daughter on their shores now, and quite delighted if gossip had proved true that she was about to run into the daughter.