Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/803

Rh fastening", as quickly as their skilled fingers could work, till the last fold fell into its place, and the under-housemaid stepped back with clasped hands and an "Oh! my lady!" couched in a note of irrepressible ecstasy.

"Well?" said Kitty, still frowning—"eh, Blanche?—"

The maid proper would have scorned to show emotion; but she nodded approval. "If you ask me, my lady, I think you have never looked so well in anything."

Kitty's brow relaxed at last, as she stood gazing at the reflection in the large glass before her. She saw herself as Artemis—à la Madame de Longueville—in a hunting-dress of white silk, descending to the ankles, embroidered from top to toe in crescents of seed-pearls and silver, and held at the waist by a silver girdle. Her throat was covered with magnificent pearls, a Tranmore family possession, lent by Lady Tranmore for the occasion. The slim ankles and feet were cased in white silk, cross-gartered with silver and shod with silver sandals. Her belt held her quiver of white-winged arrows; her bow of ivory inlaid with silver was slung at her shoulder, while across her breast, the only note of color in the general harmony of white, fell a scarf of apple-green holding the horn, also of ivory and silver, which, like the belt and bow, had been designed for her in Madame de Longueville's Paris.

But neither she nor her model would have been finally content with an adornment so delicately fanciful and minute. Both Kitty and the goddess of the Fronde knew that they must hold their own in a crowd. For this there must be diamonds. The sleeves, therefore, on the white arms fell back from diamond clasps; the ivory spear in her right hand was topped by a small genius with glittering wings; and in the masses of her fair hair, bound with pearl fillets, shone the large diamond crescent that Lady Tranmore had foreseen, with one small attendant star at either side.

"Well, upon my word, Kitty!" said a voice from her husband's dressing-room.

Kitty turned impetuously.

"Do you like it?" she cried. Ashe approached. She lifted her horn to her mouth and stood tiptoe. The movement was enchanting; it had in it the youth and freshness of spring woods; it suggested mountain distances and the solitudes of high valleys. Intoxication spoke in Ashe's pulses; he wished the maids had been far away that he might have taken the goddess in his very human arms. Instead of which he stood lazily smiling.

"What Endymion are you calling?" he asked her. "Kitty, you are a dream!"

Kitty pirouetted, then suddenly stopped short and held out a foot.

"Look at those silk things, sir. Nobody but Fanchette could have made them look anything but a botch. But they spoil the dress. And all to please mother and Mrs. Grundy!"

"I like them. I suppose—the nearest you could get to buskins? You would have preferred ankles au naturel? I don't think you'd have been admitted, Kitty."

"Shouldn't I! And so few people have feet they can show!" sighed Kitty, regretfully.

Ashe's eyes met those of the maid, who was trying to hide her smiles, and he and she both laughed.

"What do you think about it, eh, Blanche?"

"I think her ladyship is much better as she is," said the maid, decidedly. "She'd have felt very strange when she got there."

Kitty turned upon her like a whirlwind. "Go to bed!" she said, putting both hands on the shoulders of the maid—"go to bed at once! Esther can give me my cloak. Do you know, William, she was awake all last night thinking of her brother—"

"The brother who has had an operation? But I thought there was good news?" said Ashe, kindly.

"He's much better," put in Kitty. "She heard this afternoon. She won't be such a goose as to lie awake, I should hope, to-night. Don't let me catch you here when I get back!" she said, releasing the girl, whose eyes had filled with tears.

"Mr. Ashe will help me, and if he pulls the strings into knots, I shall just cut them—so there! Go away, get your supper, and go to bed. Such a life as I've led them all to-day!" She threw up her hands in a perfunctory penitence.

The maid was forced to go, and the