society. She took a sheet of note-paper, wrote the date at the top,
added, "I make my début in November," signed her name at the extreme
end of the sheet, addressed it to her dressmaker in Paris, and sent
it.

It was said that in her dresses the very handsomest silks were
used for linings, and that real lace was used where others put
imitation,--around the bottoms of the skirts, for instance,--and silk
ribbons of the best quality served the purposes of ordinary tapes; and
sometimes the buttons were of real gold and silver, sometimes set
with precious stones. Not that she ordered these particulars, but the
dressmakers, when given _carte blanche_ by those who do not condescend
to details, so soon exhaust the outside limits of garments that
perforce they take to plastering them inside with gold, so to speak,
and, when the bill goes in, they depend upon the furnishings to carry
out a certain amount of the contract in justifying the price. And it
was said that these costly dresses, after being worn once or twice,
were cast aside, thrown upon the floor, given to the negroes--anything
to get them out of sight. Not an inch of the real lace, not one of the
jeweled buttons, not a scrap of ribbon, was ripped off to save. And it
was said that if she wanted to romp with her dogs in all her finery,
she did it; she was known to have ridden horseback, one moonlight
night, all around the plantation in a white silk dinner-dress flounced
with Alençon. And at night, when she came from the balls, tired, tired
to death as only balls can render one, she would throw herself down
upon her bed in her tulle skirts,--on top, or not, of the exquisite
flowers, she did not care,--and make her maid undress her in that
position; often having her bodices cut off her, because she was too
tired to turn over and have them unlaced.