“Oh, dear!  Do we owe her for all those?”

“We do.”

“Well, then, I fear you are right, Anna,” Mrs. Carroll said, ruefully.

The two women continued to look at each other.  Mrs. Carroll had a curious round-eyed face of consternation, like a baby; Anna looked, on the contrary, older than usual.  Her features seemed quite sharpened out by thought.

“What do you think we can do, Anna?” asked Mrs. Carroll, at length.  “Do you suppose if we told Madame Potoffsky just how it was, how dear Ina was going to be married, and how interested we all were in having her look nice and have pretty things that she would—­”

“No, I don’t think so,” Anna said, shortly.  “What does Madame Potoffsky care about Ina and her getting married, except for what she makes out of it?”

“But, Anna, she is very rich.  Everybody says so.  She has a beautiful house, and a country-house, and keeps a carriage to go to her shop in.”

“Well, what of that?”

“I thought the Russians believed that rich people ought to do things for people who were not rich, or else be blown up with bombs.”

“Don’t be silly, Amy, darling.”

“I am quite in earnest, Anna, I really thought so.”

“Well, you thought wrong then, dear.  There is no reason in the world why a dressmaker, if she is as rich as a Vanderbilt, should make Ina’s wedding-clothes for nothing, and she won’t.”

“Well, I suppose you are right, Anna, but what is to be done?  How about Miss Sargent?  She was very good.”

“Miss Sargent, Amy dear!”

“Do we own her much, Anna?”

“Owe her much?  We owe her everything!”

“Madame Rogers?”

“Madame Rogers!  The last time I asked her to do anything she insulted me.  She told me to my face she did not work for dead-beats.”

“She was a very vulgar woman, Anna.  I don’t think I would patronize her under any circumstances.”

“No, I would not either, dear.  But that finishes the New York dressmakers.”

“How about the Hillfield one?”

“Amy!”

“Well, I suppose you are right; but what—­”

“We shall have to go to a dressmaker in Banbridge.  We have never had any work done here, and there can be no difficulty about it.”

“But, Anna, how can we have her married with a trousseau made in Banbridge?”

“It is either that or no trousseau at all.”

Mrs. Carroll seldom wept, but she actually shed a few tears over the prospect of a shabbily made trousseau for Ina.  “And she will go in the best society in Kentucky, too,” she said, pitifully.  “They’ll attribute it all to the lack of taste in the North,” Anna said.

Ina herself made no objection whatever to employing the Banbridge dressmaker; in fact, she seemed to have little interest in her clothes at first.  After a while she became rather feverishly excited over them.