Page:Comin' Thro' the Rye (1898).djvu/472

464 "It seems altogether wrong that you should be the guest of a woman who played you so vile a part."

"Hush!" I whisper, as his voice rises in his excitement, for we are in the crowd now," and take care" for with his head lifted skywards, and his thoughts busily engaged, he is taking no heed to his steps, which are encroaching on the train of a lady before us, who looks as though she had seized Fashion forcibly by the nose, and wrested a costume from her, so bizarre and outrageous and eye-offending are its properties. If it be true that the test of a perfect toilet is that one does not know of what it is composed, although one is distinctly aware that the person in it looks charming, then are those here present found seriously wanting, for the dress and the manner of it strikes the beholder first, the wearer of it after. And yet there are a few beauties, beautifully dressed; a few graceful women, with the grace that is almost as great a gift as beauty; a few grandes dames, who hold their own against fairness, wit, and youth, by merit of a certain air du faubourg and fascination, that it is hard to define, harder still to resist. I wonder why some women have so much chic, individuality, what you will, and others none at all? Hundreds and thousands of women are made on precisely the same pattern, but now and again you come across one who, by right of some sturdy strain of character or independence of thought, marks herself out from the rest, and is not merged in the common ruck, but leads it.

"Do you men never have any hankerings after your lost doublet, hose, velvet cloaks, and other smart trappings, George? I should if I were a man. Now I have no doubt that blue would be as becoming to some of you as it would be fatal to others; that some particular colour sets you off as well as it does particular women, and that the very ugliest of you might be furbished up into something uncommon-looking or picturesque."

"I can't say it ever bothers me," says George, laughing; "but there is one thing I should like to have back, and that is the good