Page:Female Prose Writers of America.djvu/53

 nearly all the time; except when the Cotterells talked to her from a sense of duty. She played something on the harp, but nobody seemed to listen. I know that I was talking and laughing all the time, and so was every one else. People that are ill-dressed should never play on harps. It shows them too plainly.”

“And they should never go to parties either,” said Mrs. Derrington. “Poor Mrs. Crandon, has she no friend to tell her so? But I never heard before that she had fallen off in her costume. The report may be true that her husband’s executors have defrauded her of a considerable portion of her property. However, I have lost sight of her for some years.”

“And then,” said Miss Rodwell, “it was not to be expected that Crandon could sustain herself permanently in society, considering how she first got into it.”

“I own,” resumed Mrs. Derrington, “I was rather surprised when I first saw Mrs. Crandon among us. It was, I believe, at Mrs. Hautonberg’s famous thousand dollar party, the winter that it was fashionable to report the cost of those things; so that, before the end of the season, parties had mounted up to twice that sum. How did she happen to get there, for it was certainly the cause of her having a run all that season? I never exactly understood the circumstances.”

“Oh, I can tell you all about it,” replied Miss Rodwell; “for I was in the secret. Mr. Crandon was a jobber, and had realized a great deal of money, and they lived in a fine house, and made a show, but nobody in society ever thought of noticing them. After a while he took her to Europe, and they spent several months in Paris, and Mrs. Crandon (who, to do her justice, was then a very handsome woman) fitted herself out with a variety of elegant French dresses, made by an exquisite artiste, and with millinery equally recherché. When she came home, the fame of all these beautiful things spread beyond the limits of her own circle, and we were all dying to see them (particularly the evening costumes), and to borrow them as patterns for our own mantuamakers and milliners. But while she continued meandering about among her own set, we had no chance of seeing much more than the divine bonnet