of Paris, and adapt the Signora's costume to the fashions of the place.
But the Signora having predetermined on a Greek jacket, and knowing
by instinct that Isaura would be disposed to thwart that splendid
predilection, had artfully suggested that it would be better to go
to the couturiere with Madame Savarin, as being a more experienced
adviser,--and the coupe only held two.

As Madame Savarin was about the same age as the Signora, and dressed as
became her years and in excellent taste, Isaura thought this an admirable
suggestion; and pressing into her chaperon's hand a _billet de banque_
sufficient to re-equip her _cap-a pie_, dismissed the subject from her
mind. But the Signora was much too cunning to submit her passion for the
Greek jacket to the discouraging comments of Madame Savarin.
Monopolizing the _coupe_, she became absolute mistress of the situation.
She went to no fashionable couturiere's. She went to a magasin that she
had seen advertised in the _Petites Afiches_ as supplying superb costumes
for fancy-balls and amateur performers in private theatricals. She
returned home triumphant, with a jacket still more dazzling to the eye
than that of the English lady.

When Isaura first beheld it, she drew back in a sort of superstitious
terror, as of a comet or other blazing portent.

"_Cosa stupenda_!" (stupendous thing!) She might well be dismayed when
the Signora proposed to appear thus attired in M. Louvier's salon. What
might be admired as coquetry of dress in a young beauty of rank so great
that even a vulgarity in her would be called distinguee, was certainly an
audacious challenge of ridicule in the elderly _ci-devant_ music-teacher.

But how could Isaura, how can any one of common humanity, say to a woman