the result of deliberate artifice--the true offspring of an habitual
and base indulgence.

It was to meet this unsophisticated, impassioned, and confiding
girl, that Alfred Stevens bestowed such particular pains on his
costume. He felt its deficiencies, and, accordingly, the necessity
of making the most of it; for, though he perfectly well knew that
such a woman as Margaret Cooper would have been the very last to
regard the mere garment in which a congenial nature is arrayed,
yet he also well knew that the costume is not less indicative of
the tastes than the wealth of the wearer. You will see thousands
of persons, men and women, richly dressed, and but one will be WELL
dressed: that one, most generally, will be the individual who is
perhaps of all others possessed of the least resources for dress,
other than those which dwell in the well-arranged mind, the
well-disposing taste, and the happy, crowning fancy.

His tasks of the toilet were at length ended, and he was preparing
to go forth. He was about to leave the chamber, had already placed
his hand upon the latch of the door, when he heard the voice of his
hostess, on the stairway, in seeming expostulation with her son.
He was about to forbear his purpose of departure as the parties had
retired, when, remembering the solicitude of the lady, and thinking
it would show that zest in her service which he really could not
entertain, he determined at once to to join the young man, and
begin with him that certain degree of intimacy without which it
could scarcely be supposed that he could broach the subject of his
personal affairs. He felt somewhat the awkwardness of this assumed
duty, but then he recollected his vocation; he knew the paramount
influence of the clergy upon all classes of persons in the West,