“Oh! there is Madame Villegry,” cried Jacqueline; “how handsome she is!  I should like one of these days to be that kind of beauty, so tall and slender.  Her waist measure is only twenty-one and two thirds inches.  The woman who makes her corsets and my mamma’s told us so.  She brought us one of her corsets to look at, a love of a corset, in brocatelle, all over many-colored flowers.  That material is much more ‘distingue’ than the old satin—­”

“But what a queer idea it is to waste all that upon a thing that nobody will ever look at,” said Dolly, her round eyes opening wider than before.

“Oh! it is just to please herself, I suppose.  I understand that!  Besides, nothing is too good for such a figure.  But what I admire most is her extraordinary hair.”

“Which changes its color now and then,” observed the sharpest of the three Wermant sisters.  “Extraordinary is just the word for it.  At present it is dark red.  Henna did that, I suppose.  Raoul—­our brother—­when he was in Africa saw Arab women who used henna.  They tied their heads up in a sort of poultice made of little leaves, something like tea-leaves.  In twenty-four hours the hair will be dyed red, and will stay red for a year or more.  You can try it if you like.  I think it is disgusting.”

“Oh! look, there is Madame de Sternay.  I recognized her by her perfume before I had even seen her.  What delightful things good perfumes are!”

“What is it?  Is it heliotrope or jessamine?” asked Yvonne d’Etaples, sniffing in the air.

“No—­it is only orris-root—­nothing but orris-root; but she puts it everywhere about her—­in the hem of her petticoat, in the lining of her dress.  She lives, one might say, in the middle of a sachet.  The thing that will please me most when I am married will be to have no limit to my perfumes.  Till then I have to satisfy myself with very little,” sighed Jacqueline, drawing a little bunch of violets from the loose folds of her blouse, and inhaling their fragrance with delight.

“‘Tiens’! here comes somebody who has to be contented with much less,” said Yvonne, as a young girl joined their circle.  She was small, awkward, timid, and badly dressed.  On seeing her Colette whispered “Oh! that tiresome Giselle.  We sha’n’t be able to talk another word.”

Jacqueline kissed Giselle de Monredon.  They were distant cousins, though they saw each other very seldom.  Giselle was an orphan, having lost both her father and her mother, and was being educated in a convent from which she was allowed to come out only on great occasions.  Her grandmother, whose ideas were those of the old school, had placed her there.  The Easter holidays accounted for Giselle’s unexpected arrival.  Wrapped in a large cloak which covered up her convent uniform, she looked, as compared with the gay girls around her, like a poor sombre night-moth, dazzled by the light, in company with other glittering creatures of the insect race, fluttering with graceful movements, transparent wings and shining corselets.