“Well, now, ain’t that exactly like you, Gabriella,” scolded Miss Polly; “but when you come to think of it,” she conceded after a minute or two, “I reckon we’re all made like that in the beginning.  Why, I remember way back yonder in the ‘seventies how I was always tryin’ to persuade a woman with a skinny figure not to wear a cuirass basque and a woman with a stout figure not to put on a draped polonaise.  I got to know better presently, and you will, too, before you’ve been at it much longer.  They all think they can look like fashion plates—­the skinniest and the stoutest alike—­and there ain’t a bit of use tryin’ to undeceive ’em.  The last thing a woman ever sees straight is her figure.”

“I can’t help feeling,” demurred Gabriella, forsaking the moral issue for the argument of mere expediency, “that honesty is good business.”

“Well, it ain’t,” retorted Miss Polly sharply.  “It may be good religion and good behaviour, but there’s one thing it certainly ain’t, and that is good business.  How many of these rich men we read about in the papers do you reckon spend their time settin’ around and bein’ honest?  Mind you I ain’t sayin’ I’d lie or steal myself, Gabriella, but I’m poor, and what I’m sayin’ is that when you feel that way about it, you’re as likely to stay poor as not.”

But the next day, life, with one of those startling surprises which defy philosophy and make drama, confirmed the most illogical of Gabriella’s assumptions.  Madame, coming in late, with a blotched face and puffy eyelids, had dispatched her to the workroom, and she was sitting before one of the long tables, embroidering azure beads on a black collar, when Agnes darted through the door and jerked the needle out of her hand.

“Madame is asking for you.  Come as quick as you can!” she cried excitedly, and sped back again to the shelter of the artificial rose-bushes at the end of the hall.

Rising hurriedly, and brushing the scraps of silk from her cloth skirt as she walked, Gabriella followed the sound of Madame’s wheedling voice, and found herself, as she parted the curtains of a fitting-room, in the opulent presence of Mrs. Pletheridge.

“Yes, as I told you, we trust implicitly to Mrs. Carr’s eye.  She has the true eye of the artist,” Madame simpered fawningly as she entered.  “Did you send for me?” asked Gabriella, business-like and alert on the threshold.

“Good morning, Mrs. Carr!  I told Madame Dinard that I wanted you to wait on me.  I want some one who tells me the truth,” explained Mrs. Pletheridge so graciously that Gabriella would hardly have recognized her.  Something—­sleep, pleasure, or pious meditation—­had altered overnight not only her temper but even the fleshly vehicle of its uncertain manifestations.  Her features appeared to have adjusted themselves to the size of her face, and she spoke quite affably, though still with her manner of addressing an inferior.

“I want you to show me something that will really suit me,” she said.  “I think the grayish-green cloth from Blandin might be copied in silver, but I should like you to see it on me.  I know you will tell me what you really think.”  Her voice faltered and deepened to a note of pathos.