“Oh my, Duchess Vandermir, why is her face so swollen…?”

“It’s surprising she went out like that. She must be very distressed.”

People whispered in shock upon seeing Arasila appear with a ghostly complexion.

However, Arasila paid no attention and slowly crossed the hall, looking only at the Duchess’s table.

When she finally arrived at the table, even the Duchess looked slightly flustered.

“Do you have something to say? To appear in such a state without any shame…”

Ignoring whatever the Duchess was saying, Arasila opened her handbag. Though her movements weren’t dramatic, everyone was watching her.

In the strange silence, Arasila slowly took out what was inside her handbag. Held in her white, slender fingers was a purple violet.

Why did that come out of there…?

The noble ladies sitting at the Duchess’s table were slightly taken aback, but what followed was even more surprising.

Plop. The purple violet thrown by Arasila landed precisely in front of the Duchess.

As everyone was shocked, Arasila’s mouth opened.

“Duchess, I’m telling you this because I might die at this rate. For the past week, I’ve done everything you’ve asked. Even if it was labor unbefitting a noble, I didn’t refuse.”

Her unusually clear and articulate voice spread through the hall like a wave.

Arasila spoke, raising her blistered hands to her chest for all to see.

“But no matter how hard I try, you won’t accept me, so I don’t know what else to do. Should I receive public punishment here? Or should I wipe the floor with a towel again? Will it end if I kneel at your feet and beg?”

The one who attacks first usually wins.

Before coming here, Arasila had obtained a single purple violet through Audrey.

She intended to preemptively ruin the Duchess’s image before the Duchess could humiliate her by making her stand and throw flowers.

Although she hadn’t found anyone to support her, it didn’t matter.

They would surely appear.

She wanted to… have tears welling up in her clear blue eyes like glass, but tears didn’t come as easily as she thought.

In a hurry, Arasila buried her face in her hands as if crying. People began to whisper as they saw her shoulders slightly shaking.

They were the neutral nobles invited to today’s tea party, excluding the Duchess’s faction.

“Did you hear what Duchess Vandermir just said? ‘Again’ means the Duchess actually made her do those things, right?”

“I thought the rumors were exaggerated, but I guess not.”

“Oh my, oh my. Even for Duchess Vandermir, this is a bit…”

Most of them had heard recent rumors about Arasila and the Duchess.

While it’s common for such conflicts and power struggles to occur in the early stages of marriage, when it goes too far, people start to disapprove.

Imprisoning her without food, treating her like a slave, wielding a whip…

Honestly, many were secretly disappointed by the Duchess’s ungraceful methods unbecoming of her status.

“Ah, poor Duchess Vandermir, how much she must have suffered to do this.”

“Seeing her cry like that makes me feel sorry for her. She’s about the same age as my daughter.”

“As someone with only daughters, I’m already worried about the future and can’t help but sigh.”

If things had gone according to the Duchess’s plan, they would have contributed to ruining Arasila’s reputation. But because Arasila made the first move, it was having the opposite effect.

By sympathizing with Arasila, they were indirectly lending her strength.

Noticing the stirring atmosphere, the Duchess let out a hollow laugh. She had known from the start that Arasila was impudent, but she didn’t expect her to be so cunning as to try and turn the tables like this.

‘Ha! I see you managed to find the flower from the invitation? You clever little wench.’

Skillfully calming her boiling insides, the Duchess stood up with an arrogant posture.

While her guts to pick a fight in front of everyone were commendable, objectively speaking, the Duchess was one step ahead in social verbal sparring skills.

If they were to seriously clash, there was no way she couldn’t take down such a young girl.

“You have no shame, now exposing family matters—”

Just as she was about to speak as the highest elder of the Vandermir family, since there was no one else to throw flowers after Arasila anyway, that moment—

Arasila, aware that directly arguing with the Duchess would be to her disadvantage, moved on to her next plan.

“Ah, my head.”

She clutched her temple, staggered, and then collapsed with a thud.

“Gasp, Duchess Vandermir has collapsed!”

“Someone go call for help!”

The Hounds’ Count’s hall became chaotic due to Arasila’s sudden fainting. As it was rare for someone to collapse, everyone was in a panic and didn’t know what to do.

Like a flower cruelly broken by rough hands, Arasila lay pitifully on the floor with an extremely pale complexion. No one realized she was putting on a masterful fainting performance.

“My lady—!”

Three maids, summoned by the call, came running breathlessly through the open hall doors. They were the maids of the Vandermir mansion, led by Audrey.

They urgently checked their mistress’s complexion and massaged her hands and feet. Arasila secretly moved her fingers to poke Audrey.

There was something she had instructed Audrey separately while preparing for this occasion.

Fortunately, understanding the signal, Audrey demonstrated acting skills far superior to her mistress and cried out to the Duchess.

“Duchess, this is too much! Even if you don’t like my lady, how could you treat a person like this! Since the Duchess arrived, my lady hasn’t been able to sleep more than three or four hours a day, and hasn’t had a proper meal. Is it okay to drain someone’s life like this? Just kill me instead!”

The tearful plea of the loyal maid spread deeply and quickly among the people. Arasila, completely limp and relaxed, inwardly marveled.

Wow, our Audrey could be a theater actress!

On the other hand, the Duchess was simply dumbfounded. Having only heard her opponent’s words without being able to start her own due to Arasila’s collapse, she was already frustrated.

It was maddening enough to have her words cut short, but now Arasila’s personal maid was openly accusing her, which made her blood boil.

“How dare a mere maid raise her voice here! Are you saying it’s my fault your mistress collapsed?!”

“Duchess, don’t you remember making my lady do household chores like a maid? Just yesterday, my lady was cleaning the corridor windows of the guest room where you’re staying all by herself! She must have been overworked every day, no doubt putting a strain on her body!”

Inspired by Audrey’s outcry, another maid refuted while shedding tears. The remaining maid didn’t blame the Duchess.

But—

“Sob, sob, our poor lady! Always thinking of us first, even while being so ill and never showing it! How can we ever repay this heart!”

She added to the dramatic effect by wailing while clinging to Arasila.

As the two maids she hadn’t briefed beforehand performed better than expected, Arasila struggled desperately to keep her mouth from curling into a smile.

Whew, I’m glad I brought two more people.

And among the spectators watching all this, a commotion arose like a storm-tossed sea. They increasingly felt that the Duchess’s misdeeds were getting worse.

“My goodness, isn’t it torture to not let someone sleep or eat? To make her work on top of that is no different from treating her like a prisoner, isn’t it?”

“I can’t believe this happened in a prestigious family like the Vandermir ducal house. Duchess Vandermir is also someone else’s precious daughter, how could they abuse her like this.”

“Come to think of it, didn’t the Duchess have a similar conflict with the late first Duchess in the past?”

“That’s right. She died of illness, but it’s a bit unsettling to see a similar situation repeating.”

As public opinion gradually turned unfavorable towards the Duchess, the noble ladies of her faction hesitated, unsure what to do.

To anyone watching, the current situation clearly painted the Duchess as the perpetrator and Arasila as the victim. It wasn’t easy to take the Duchess’s side in this scenario.

“The, the Duchess must have had her reasons! How could she have known Duchess Vandermir would be so frail?”

Although Countess Hounds bravely defended the Duchess, other nobles who were well aware of their friendship turned a blind eye.

There’s no benefit in listening to biased statements.

As the situation began to settle in a way that made only her look like the villain, the Duchess’s blood pressure soared.

She had intended to expose Arasila’s reckless behavior through the purple violet passing game and discipline her to kneel at her feet, not to become someone who publicly tormented her granddaughter-in-law to the point of fainting.

‘My face! My reputation!’

As she grabbed the back of her neck, having ended up damaging her own image while trying to bury Arasila, the Hounds’ Count’s family doctor arrived.

Soon, Arasila was moved to the Count’s reception room for examination, and the tea party came to an anticlimactic end.

“Make sure to keep the mouths of today’s attendees shut.”

The Duchess issued an nearly impossible order to Countess Hounds as she left the Count’s residence. It was a pitiful struggle to prevent today’s events from becoming gossip in high society.

However, even if the Countess had somehow managed to silence the attendees, the calamity that befell her the next day would have remained unchanged.

An anonymous tip came in to , the most notorious newspaper in the Setron Empire.

The content was that a Lady K and an opera singer were planning to have a secret meeting, taking advantage of the tea party at the Hounds’ Count’s residence.

As it happened, there were quite a few noble ladies with the initial K among those attending the tea party, such as Kate, Camilla, and Carrie.

sent a reporter to cover the tea party, thinking they had nothing to lose.

The reporter, disguised as a grocery delivery man, infiltrated and was searching for Lady K with sharp eyes when he encountered an unexpected situation.

‘A fight between Duchess Vandermir and the newly married Duchess Vandermir!’

He watched with great interest. It felt like seeing the true faces of nobles who always pretend to be refined.

When Arasila collapsed, he almost jumped up and shouted ‘Scoop!’

A noble grandmother-in-law and granddaughter-in-law fighting, and suddenly one of them collapses – how could that not be a mouthwatering news story?

Suffering from both scoop fever and attention-seeking disease as a reporter, stimulating headlines popped up in his mind like mushrooms after rain.

“Secret abuse in a noble house? Why the new bride cries every night.”

“How long must we watch husbands’ families fight with wives! Exposing the outdated family traditions of a certain ducal house.”

“Duchess A, rushed into marriage and in the end… A tragic end you can’t watch without tears.”

His hands were itching, and he couldn’t bear it any longer.

Although he didn’t witness the secret meeting between the noble lady and the opera singer as tipped off, it didn’t matter since he had found another story instead.

That evening, after obtaining information that Arasila had collapsed due to excessive stress and malnutrition, he excitedly wrote articles all night long.

And those articles turned the Setron Empire upside down the next morning.