the nature of the tie with the gentleman at the Hotel Brighton? More
than ever before it floated to her through the bars of the cage that this
at last was the high reality, the bristling truth that she had hitherto
only patched up and eked out--one of the creatures, in fine, in whom all
the conditions for happiness actually met, and who, in the air they made,
bloomed with an unwitting insolence. What came home to the girl was the
way the insolence was tempered by something that was equally a part of
the distinguished life, the custom of a flowerlike bend to the less
fortunate--a dropped fragrance, a mere quick breath, but which in fact
pervaded and lingered. The apparition was very young, but certainly
married, and our fatigued friend had a sufficient store of mythological
comparison to recognise the port of Juno. Marguerite might be "awful,"
but she knew how to dress a goddess.

Pearls and Spanish lace--she herself, with assurance, could see them, and
the "full length" too, and also red velvet bows, which, disposed on the
lace in a particular manner (she could have placed them with the turn of
a hand) were of course to adorn the front of a black brocade that would
be like a dress in a picture. However, neither Marguerite nor Lady Agnes
nor Haddon nor Fritz nor Gussy was what the wearer of this garment had
really come in for. She had come in for Everard--and that was doubtless
not his true name either. If our young lady had never taken such jumps
before it was simply that she had never before been so affected. She
went all the way. Mary and Cissy had been round together, in their
single superb person, to see him--he must live round the corner; they had
found that, in consequence of something they had come, precisely, to make
up for or to have another scene about, he had gone off--gone off just on
purpose to make them feel it; on which they had come together to Cocker's
as to the nearest place; where they had put in the three forms partly in
order not to put in the one alone. The two others in a manner, covered