critical impertinence
she dreaded:

"There, ma'am! If you don't look the loveliest woman in the room, I
shall never trust my eyes again."

Mary held her peace, for the commonplace style of the dress but added
to her dissatisfaction with the color. It was all puffed and bubbled
and blown about, here and there and everywhere, so that the form of the
woman was lost in the frolic shapelessness of the cloud. The whole, if
whole it could be called, was a miserable attempt at combining fancy
and fashion, and, in result, an ugly nothing.

"I see you don't like it!" said Hesper, with a mingling of displeasure
and dismay. "I wish you had come a few days sooner! It is much too late
to do anything now. I might just as well have gone without showing it
to you!--Here, Folter!"

With a look almost of disgust, she began to pull off the dress, in
which, a few hours later, she would yet make the attempt to enchant an
assembly.

"O ma'am!" cried Mary, "I wish you had told me yesterday. There would
have been time then.--And I don't know," she added, seeing disgust
change to mortification on Hesper's countenance, "but something might
be done yet."

"Oh, indeed!" dropped from Folter's lips with an indescribable
expression.

"What can be done?" said Hesper, angrily. "There can be no time for
anything."

"If only we had the stuff!" said Mary. "That shade doesn't suit your
complexion. It ought to be much, much darker--in fact, a different
color altogether."

Folter was furious, but restrained herself sufficiently to preserve
some calmness of tone, although her face turned almost blue with the
effort, as she said:

"Miss Marston is not long from the country, ma'am, and don't know
what's suitable to a London drawing-room."

Her mistress was too dejected to snub her impertinence.

"What color were you thinking of, Miss Marston?" Hesper asked, with a
stiffness that would have been more in place had Mary volunteered the
opinion she had been asked to give. She was out of temper with Mary
from feeling certain she was right, and believing there was no remedy.

"I could not describe it," answered Mary. "And, indeed, the color I
have in my mind may not be to be had. I have seen it somewhere, but,
whether in a stuff or only in nature, I can not at this moment be
certain."

"Where's the good of talking like that--excuse me, ma'am--it's more
than I can bear--when the ball comes off in a few hours?" cried Folter,
ending with eyes of mur