perforce they take to plastering them inside with gold, so to speak,
and, when the bill goes in, they depend upon the furnishings to carry
out a certain amount of the contract in justifying the price. And it
was said that these costly dresses, after being worn once or twice,
were cast aside, thrown upon the floor, given to the negroes--anything
to get them out of sight. Not an inch of the real lace, not one of the
jeweled buttons, not a scrap of ribbon, was ripped off to save. And it
was said that if she wanted to romp with her dogs in all her finery,
she did it; she was known to have ridden horseback, one moonlight
night, all around the plantation in a white silk dinner-dress flounced
with Alencon. And at night, when she came from the balls, tired, tired
to death as only balls can render one, she would throw herself down
upon her bed in her tulle skirts,--on top, or not, of the exquisite
flowers, she did not care,--and make her maid undress her in that
position; often having her bodices cut off her, because she was too
tired to turn over and have them unlaced.

That she was admired, raved about, loved even, goes without saying.
After the first month she held the refusal of half the beaux of New
Orleans. Men did absurd, undignified, preposterous things for her; and
she? Love? Marry? The idea never occurred to her. She treated the
most exquisite of her pretenders no better than she treated her Paris
gowns, for the matter of that. She could not even bring herself to
listen to a proposal patiently; whistling to her dogs, in the middle
of the most ardent protestations, or jumping up and walking away with
a shrug of the shoulders, and a "Bah!"

[Illustration: "WALKING AWAY WITH A SHRUG OF THE SHOULDERS."]

Well! Every one knows what happened after '59. There is no need to
repeat. The history of one is the history of all. But there was this
difference--for there is every shade of difference in misfortune, as
there is every shade of resemblance in happiness. Mortemart des Islets
went off to fight. That was natural; his family had been doing that,
he thought, or said, ever since Charlemagne. Just as naturally he was
killed in the first engagement. They, his family, were always
among the first killed; so much so that it began to be considered
assassination to fight a duel with any of them. All that was in the
ordinary course of events. One difference in their misfortunes lay
in that after the city was captured, their plantat