uarrel! We both find the idea so amusing that we laugh in
concert.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

"_Gertrude._ Is my knight come? O the Lord, my band! Sister, do my
cheeks look well? Give me a little box o' the ear, that I may seem
to blush."--EASTWARD HOE.

She is gone now. The atmosphere of the house seems less clear, less
pure, now that she has left it. As she drives away, it seems to me,
looking after her, that no flower ever had a modester face, a more
delicate bloom. If I had time to think about it, I should fret sorely
after her, I should grievously miss her; but I have none.

The carriage that takes her to the station is to wait half an hour, and
then bring back Roger. There is, therefore, not more than enough time
for me to make the careful and lengthy toilet, on which I have expended
so much painstaking thought. I have deferred making it till now, so that
I may appear in perfect dainty freshness, as if I had just emerged from
the manifold silver papers of a bandbox, before him when he
arrives--that not a hair of my flax head may be displaced from its silky
sweep; that there may be no risk of Vick jumping up, and defiling me
with muddy paws that know no respect of clothes.

I take a long time over it. I snub my maid more than I ever did in my
life before. But I am complete now; to the last pin I am finished.
Perhaps--though this does not strike me till the last moment--perhaps I
am rather, nay, more than _rather_, overdressed for the occasion. But
surely this, in a person who has not long been in command of fine
clothes, and even in that short time has had very few opportunities of
airing them, is pardonable.

You remember that it is February. Well, then, this is the warm splendor
in which I am clad. Genoa velvet, of the color of a dark sapphire,
trimmed with silver-fox fur; and my head crowned with a mob-cap,
concerning which I am in doubt, and should be nervously glad to have the
boys here to enlighten me as to whether it is very becoming or rather
ridiculous. The object of the mob-cap is to approximate my age to
Roger's, and to assure all such as the velvet and fur leave in doubt,
that I am entitled to take my stand among the portly ranks of British
matrons.

"Algy was right," say I, soliloquizing aloud, as I stand before the long
cheval glass, with a back-hair glass in one hand, by whose aid I correct
my errors in the profile, three-quarters or back view; "mine is not the
most hopeless kin