come upstairs to find her.

She _does_ find her, giving way to diatribes of the most virulent, that
have Olga Bohun for their theme. Mrs. Fitzgerald, standing by, is
listening to, and assisting in, the defamatory speeches.

"Hey-day! what's the matter now?" says Madam, with a _bonhommie_
completely thrown away. Miss Fitzgerald has given the reins to her
mortification, and is prepared to hunt Olga to the death.

"I think it is disgraceful the license Mrs. Bohun allows her tongue,"
she says, angrily, still smarting under the speech she had goaded Olga
into making her an hour ago. "We have just been talking about it. She
says the most wounding things, and accuses people openly of thoughts and
actions of which they would scorn to be guilty. And this, too, when her
own actions are so hopelessly faulty, so _sure_ to be animadverted upon
by all decent people."

"Yes, yes, indeed," chimes in her mother, as in duty bound. Her voice is
feeble, but her manner vicious.

"The shameful way in which she employs nasty unguents of all kinds, and
tries by every artificial means to heighten any beauty she may possess,
is too absurdly transparent not to be known by all the world," goes on
the irate Bella. "Who run may read the rouge and veloutine that cover
her face. And as for her lids, they are so blackened that they are
positively _dirty_! Yet she pretends she has handsome eyes and lashes!"

"But, my dear, she may well lay claim to her lashes. All the Egyptian
charcoal in the world could not make them long and curly. Nature is to
be thanked for them."

"You can defend her if you like," says Bella, hysterically, "but to my
mind her conduct is--is positively _immoral_. It is cheating the public
into the belief that she has a skin when she hasn't."

"But I'm sure she has: we can all see it," says Madam O'Connor, somewhat
bewildered by this sweeping remark.

"No, you can't. I defy you to see it, it is so covered with pastes and
washes, and everything; she uses every art you can conceive."

"Well, supposing she does, what then?" says Madam, stoutly. She is
dressed in black velvet and diamonds, and is looking twice as important
and rather more good-humored than usual. "I see nothing in it. My
grandmother always rouged,--put on patches as regularly as her gown.
Every one did it in those days, I suppose. And quite right, too. Why
shouldn't a woman make herself look as attractive as she can?"

"But the barefaced fashion in which she