She held up her volume, ran to the door, and disappeared.




CHAPTER III


"Her ladyship says she would like to see you, Miss, before you go."

The speaker was Lady Coryston's maid. She stood just within the doorway of
the room where Marcia was dressing for the Opera, delivering her message
mechanically, but really absorbed in the spectacle presented by the young
girl before her. Sewell was an artist in her own sphere, and secretly
envious of the greater range of combination which Marcia's youth and beauty
made possible for the persons who dressed her, as compared with Lady
Coryston. There are all kinds of subtle variants, no doubt, in "black,"
such as Lady Coryston habitually wore; and the costliness of them left
nothing to be desired. But when she saw Marcia clothed in a new Worth or
Paquin, Sewell was sorely tempted to desert her elderly mistress and go in
search of a young one.

"Come in, Sewell," cried Marcia. "What do you think of it?"

The woman eagerly obeyed her. Marcia's little maid, Bellows, did the
honors, and the two experts, in an ecstasy, chattered the language of
their craft, while Marcia, amid her shimmering white and pink, submitted
good-humoredly to being pulled about and twisted round, till after endless
final touches, she was at last pronounced the perfect thing.