_Miss Larches_. Is there? Oh, that's charming! Do let us see them!

_Grey_. With pleasure. But remember that I expect you to admire them
all,--although I tell you that not one in ten of them is endurable, not
one in fifty pretty, not one in a hundred beautiful.

_Miss Larches_. Why, there aren't more than two or three hundred.

_Grey_. About two hundred and fifty; and if you find more than two
that fulfil all the conditions of beauty in costume, you will be more
fortunate than I have been.

_Miss Larches_ [_after a brief Inspection_]. Ah, Mr. Grey, how can you?
Most of these are caricatures.

_Grey_. Nothing of the sort. All veritable costumes, I assure you. Those
from 1750 down, fashion-plates; the others, portraits.

_Mrs. Grey_. True, Laura. I've looked at them many a time, and thought
how fearfully and wonderfully dresses have been made. Not to go back to
those bristling horrors of the Middle Ages and the _renaissance_, look
at this ball-dress of 1810: a night-gown without sleeves, made of two
breadths of pink silk, very low in the neck, and _very_ short in the
skirt.

_Tomes_. And these were our modest grandmothers, of whom we hear so
much! They went rather far in their search after the beautiful.

_Grey_. Say, rather, in their revelation of it. That was, at least, an
honest fashion, and men who married could not well complain that they