He saw her, and heard her coming to him with the crocus and the jay's feather in her breast, and cried ‘Orlando’, which meant (and it must be remembered that when bright colours like blue and yellow mix themselves in our eyes, some of it rubs off on our thoughts) first the bowing and swaying of bracken as if something were breaking through; which proved to be a ship in full sail, heaving and tossing a little dreamily, rather as if she had a whole year of summer days to make her voyage in; and so the ship bears down, heaving this way, heaving that way, nobly, indolently, and rides over the crest of this wave and sinks into the hollow of that one, and so, suddenly stands over you (who are in a little cockle shell of a boat, looking up at her) with all her sails quivering, and then, behold, they drop all of a heap on deck – as Orlando dropped now into the grass beside him.

‘The lawsuits are settled […] Turkish marriage annulled […] Children pronounced illegitimate […] Sex? Ah! What about sex? My sex’, she read out with some solemnity, ‘is pronounced indisputably, and beyond the shadow of a doubt […] female’ […] Whereupon she appended her own signature beneath Lord Palmerston's and entered from that moment into the undisturbed possession of her titles, her house, and her estate. (O 176–7)