amid the ripple of fountains, and the sighing of the cypress, in the
cool shadow cast by the marble minarets and domes of Shah Jehan's
Moomtaj mausoleum, Mr. and Mrs. Lindsay joyfully welcomed her; while
upon the fragrant air floated divine melodies that Douglass told her
were chanted by angels in her mother's grave, beneath the clustering
white columns.

When after many hours she awoke, it was night. A faint light trembled
in one of the globes of the gas chandelier, and a blanket had been
laid over her. Starting up she saw a figure sitting at the window,
apparently watching what passed in the street below.

"I hope you feel refreshed. I can testify you have slept as soundly
as the youths whom Decius put to bed some time since near Ephesus."

Olga rose, turned on the gas that flamed up instantly, and showed her
elaborately dressed in evening toilette. Her shoulders and arms,
round and pearly white, were bare save the shining tracery of jewels
in necklace and bracelets; and in the long train of blue silk that
flowed over the carpet, she looked even taller than in the morning
walking suit. Her ruddy hair, heaped nigh on her head, was surmounted
by a jewelled comb, whence fell a cataract of curls of various
lengths and sizes, that touched the filmy lace which bordered her
shoulders like a line of foam where blue silk broke on dimpled flesh.

As Regina gazed admiringly at her, Olga came closer, and stood under
the gas-light.

"A penny for your thoughts! Am I handsome? Somebody says only 'fools
and children tell the truth.' You are not exactly the latter;
certainly not the former; nevertheless, being a rustic, all unversed
in the fashionable accomplishment of 'fibbing,' you may dispense with
the varnish pot and brush. Tell me, Regina, don't you feel inclined
to fall at my feet and worship me?"

"Not in the least. But I do think you very handsome, and your dress
is quite lovely. Are you going to a party or a ball?"

"To a 'Reception,' where the people will be crowded like sardines,
where my puffs will be mashed as flat as buckwheat cakes, and my
train will go home with various gentlemen, clinging in scraps to
their boot-heels! Were you ever at the seashore? If you have ever
chanced to walk into a settlement of fiddlers, and seen them
squirming, wriggling, backward, forward, sideways, you may
understand that I am going into a similar promiscuous scramble.
Human ingenuity is vastly fertile in the production of fashion