You're enough of a student of human nature to know what that long pause means. "You've already auditioned, haven't you?"
"There's far better work to be done outside of a stultifying court, anyhow," Gwendell says, slamming the trunk closed. "This project you experienced today, for example, skewers two different dispositive tendencies of society: the callous disregard of the noble class for the innate dignity of their lesser born neighbors, and—as commoners—our unwholesome preoccupation with the fantasy of being whisked to a life of opulence overnight."
"So you raised and dashed the hopes of all those people, and abused that farmer, for the sake of skewering some tendencies?"
"I know you tried to interject out of concern for what you saw," the former courtier says with a look of understanding, "but you must know 'twas all under control."
"I'm sharing these secrets because you're the only soul yet to discern that what you saw was theatrics, which means you have an artist's eye," Gwendell says, more in tones of an aged professor than a peer no more than two years your senior. "But I certainly don't expect you to understand yet the value of the Bardbrood's work."
You look at the three of them, trying to decide how you feel about the whole affair.