As a man could not linger long in an unmarried woman’s room, Alfonso quickly left Ariadne’s room as soon as she calmed down, trying not to draw attention from others.

It was to make sure that if someone saw him, they could say that he had ‘only escorted her back’.

Alfonso had never thought deeply about the reason why men were not allowed to enter a young lady’s room before, but now he seemed to understand.

Her living space, her personal belongings, the scent of the room that smelled like a girl’s body odor, a mixture of floral fragrance and powder that was distinctly different from a man’s room, and Ariadne who was defenseless in there.

The image of what he saw kept repeating in his mind. If society freely allowed men to enter the rooms of unmarried women, many bad things were bound to happen.

Alfonso shook his head and clenched his fists, trying to shake off the thoughts.

‘I’m an excellent gentleman. I shouldn’t do this. Even imagining it is an act that harms a noble lady.’

After cooling his head in the hallway for a while, Alfonso thought he had managed to settle himself down.

‘I can control myself.’

He was an adherent of chivalry who had received the best education and was praised as the most outstanding young monarch. Self-control and patience were things he had learned all his life. It wasn’t difficult. He believed so.

However, Alfonso didn’t realize that he had put so much force in his hands that his nails had dug into his palms, leaving scratches.

‘When you gain something, you also lose something.’

Isabella was really experiencing this proverb today. It was good that she had a hand in Ariadne’s debutante dress.

It was good that she used Ariadne’s new maid, whose name she forgot, to replace the iron hooks with lighter ones that contained a lot of lead so that the cotton cloth would come loose, and it was also good that she had Maletta secretly undo the stitching on the front of the dress.

But she never imagined that what would pop out from there would not be a ‘breast pocket’ and a shabby cotton ball, but her real breasts.

‘Is she stupid? Why would she reveal that, let alone tie it up and walk around?!’

Breasts that stood firm and elastic like summer peaches without external assistance were what Isabella dreamed of.

Isabella could do anything if she could have those breasts. And yet she wrapped them up so tightly and walked around like that!

As a result, the image Isabella had imagined, where the ‘breast pocket’ would be revealed and two cotton pouches would fall under the cotton cloth, did not appear. But the clever Isabella knew how to make do with what was given.

“Did she deliberately tear it to show off her breasts?”

It was a remark Isabella threw like a dagger when noble ladies gathered in groups of three or five to discuss the ‘costume accident’ that had just occurred.

“My sister has always had excessive pride in her body. I knew she was the type to do anything to attract attention, but…”

It was a possibility that the ladies and young ladies had never imagined. They suddenly started a heated discussion in lowered voices about whether it could be true.

The ladies were mostly of the opinion ‘no way, it can’t be’, but the young ladies, many of whom were Isabella’s friends, mostly agreed with Isabella’s opinion.

“If she shows off her breasts pretending it’s a mistake, everyone will remember it.”

“Honestly, isn’t this ball too much for her? Who does she think she is to hold a solo debutante ball? Someone might think she’s royalty.”

“How on earth did she get the prince as her partner? Does anyone know?”

However, the conversations of Isabella and her friends were not so much about Ariadne’s actions themselves, but rather about how a bastard daughter of a maid who grew up in the countryside like Ariadne could dare to receive more precious treatment than them.

Because they hated her, they had already concluded that what happened to Ariadne was not an unfortunate accident but an intentional act, and then poured out criticism.

“Is that young lady pretty?”

“No, I honestly don’t know.”

“She has a nice figure though.”

At someone’s tactless compliment towards Ariadne, Viscount Leone’s daughter sharply refuted.

“Anyone can be told they have a nice figure if they walk around with their chest out. Honestly, isn’t Camellia better than little Miss De Mare?”

Camellia, the daughter of Marquis De Castiglione, threw out a humble remark while secretly feeling proud.

“No, no. And figure is something men look at only when they have bad thoughts, right? If you combine the whole face, Isabella is the prettiest.”

The girls chattered among themselves and established an internal hierarchy. While some objective appearance ranking was included, a significant part reflected the status they held among the girls.

If they were close, they would exaggerate and say they were pretty, and if a girl had no connections, she wouldn’t even make it into the gossip.

Occupying one table and sitting around in a circle, gossiping among themselves, a man’s voice, seemingly very angry, intruded between Isabella and her friends.

“Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves.”

It was Prince Alfonso, his face flushed with anger. It was a gentleman’s manner to pretend not to hear when overhearing the intimate conversations of ladies, but he could not bear to hear Ariadne’s story being recreated in such a vulgar way and stepped forward.

“Do you have any evidence that she did it on purpose? She was so upset, why do you jump to conclusions and criticize her for committing such a terrible accident with her own hands?”

The girls looked around at each other’s faces in bewilderment. This was a disaster. They didn’t expect the prince to intervene.

Being openly reprimanded by the prince at an official occasion! The other party was the prince himself, whom every young lady dreamed of impressing.

However, there were always people who never even looked at a tree they couldn’t climb.

Viscount Leone’s daughter, who had never even imagined that she could marry the prince and had no intention of looking good to him, reacted roughly to Prince Alfonso who was criticizing them.

“Greetings to the little sun of the empire, His Highness Prince Alfonso. But this is a matter between us girls.”

As Viscount Leone’s daughter took the lead, the girls around her also started muttering together.

“Right, how would Prince Alfonso know about the sly tricks of women. Do you like little Miss De Mare?”

“Did you fall for her after seeing her breasts? Oh my, I didn’t see Prince Alfonso that way.”

“He must have been fooled by that fox who revealed her breasts! How sly must she have been for the prince to be like this? How does he know she was upset?”

Alfonso was taken aback by the unexpected hostility of the young ladies. Throughout his entire life, young ladies of his age had always smiled at him even when he said strange things, but they had never disliked him.

It was the first time girls had been so hostile to him even though he was saying the right thing. Isabella, who had the girls behind her like a royal guard, smiled a cunning smile of victory behind her friends.

Then Alfonso’s reinforcement appeared. It was Marchioness De Marquez.

“When a peer goes through a pitiful event, you should show solidarity and comfort, not jump in like fish in water and chatter away. Did your parents teach you to do that?”

Marchioness De Marquez was someone who had grown up with etiquette and refinement as her bible in a high-ranking family. Moreover, it was a crisis where her lord’s son could get a bad reputation. She scolded the young ladies with an icy rebuke.

However, the young ladies were just about to repel even the prince. They were not the type to easily admit defeat.

But if it had been any noble lady, the girls could have chattered ‘who is that auntie’ and moved on, but Marchioness De Marquez was known as Queen Marguerite’s closest aide and the lady of the prestigious Marquez family, and a prominent figure in San Carlo’s social circle.

No one could dare say in front of her that she ‘doesn’t know the world of women’ because she had been in the social circle for over 20 years. So they could only frown but no one dared to jump at her.

The experienced Marchioness De Marquez could clearly see who the ringleader of this situation was. So she pointed out Isabella in the midst of it and added one more thing.

“Miss De Mare, the eldest daughter, I know you are a precious gem raised gracefully under an excellent father. Your father may not know, but he would want you to have a good relationship between sisters and defend each other!”

Marchioness De Marquez, who valued bloodline, suppressed the urge to bring up the story of the ‘vulgar daughter of a concubine’, which was her favorite rant, considering that the party was held at Cardinal De Mare’s residence, but anyone could read that nuance from Marchioness De Marquez’s cold gaze and the lack of mention of her mother.

‘That meddlesome auntie!’

Isabella’s face flushed red with anger and humiliation. But Isabella, who was strong to the weak and weak to the strong, could not shoot back her true feelings to Marchioness De Marquez in front of the prince.

So Isabella decided to play the victim. Using her welling up emotions to the fullest, Isabella started to shed tears from her large, violet eyes that resembled a puppy.

Her transparent skin flushed pink and her small, delicate frame trembled.

“I didn’t mean to…”

As the fairy-like beautiful girl shed tears one by one in front of a peer boy and a stern lady in her 40s, the picture flowed unfavorably to Prince Alfonso and Marchioness De Marquez regardless of the circumstances.

− “Why is that girl crying?”

− “Wasn’t it the lady in front who made her cry?”

− “It’s Marchioness De Marquez, that lady is a bit strict. But why is the prince standing with her? Did the prince make a mistake too?”

At the murmuring voices of the people around, Marchioness De Marquez was quite flustered, but she was trying hard to control her expression elegantly while masking her bewilderment.

Isabella was indeed not an easy opponent. Marchioness De Marquez was pondering how to safely extract Prince Alfonso from this mess without damage.

Ariadne, who had changed into her second debutante dress on the second floor, was coming down with the help of her close maids.

Ariadne was dazzlingly beautiful. The second dress was so well-fitted that one could believe it was deliberately tailored to make up for the earlier accident.

The dress had a high neckline and the sleeves went down to the fingertips, minimizing the exposure of skin, but the lines that clung tightly to the body brought out Ariadne’s figure very well without being explicit.

People’s eyes were all drawn to the protagonist of the day who captivated their gazes, and Ariadne, upon noticing the commotion, soon approached and stood next to Prince Alfonso and Marchioness De Marquez.

Ariadne and Isabella were now standing side by side confronting each other. Amidst the other people dressed in dark colors to respect the debutante, only the two young ladies in snow-white dresses stood out as if spotlighted.

Today’s Isabella was like cotton candy. Both in a good way and a bad way.

The round skirt made by piling layers of pure white organdy fabric sparkled whenever light hit it, captivating everyone’s attention, but the makeup that she put effort into to not be overshadowed by the dress did not emphasize Isabella’s greatest charm, her rabbit-like innocence, but rather looked a bit clownish depending on the angle.

On the other hand, Ariadne’s attire was very modest.

Aside from emphasizing her eyes by drawing down the corners to make them round, her makeup was simply a subtle pink naturally tinting her cheeks and lips, and under the simple dress, her tall and voluptuous figure was subtly revealed, but there was no excessive decoration.

Now, she was wearing the chandelier-like, light-scattering diamond and white topaz earrings gifted by Her Majesty the Queen instead of the ‘Heart of the Deep Blue Sea’.

As the two young ladies stood facing each other, the question that naturally came to everyone’s mind despite Isabella’s explanations resurfaced again.

Why is Isabella De Mare wearing a pure white dress when it’s not even her own debutante ball?