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140 the coffee was securely entrusted. Twelve young girls, from the nearby industrial school orphanage, were engaged to serve the guests. They were to be dressed alike, in white waists and skirts, and Mrs. Garden pronounced their effect “refreshing among the garden foliage and blossoms.”

Jane dressed her mother’s hair, relieved to know that her picturesque hat would more than conceal any deficiency in her maid’s skill. The gown which had but once before appeared in public, and then in an august and distant place, was revealed for the first time to the girls; Mrs. Garden had refused them a glimpse of it before the day. It was of white lace, skirt, waist, and coat, lined with white silk, yet touched, with a French artist’s skill, with exactly the correct effective amount of a wonderful red, like the heart of a rare rose. Roses of the same shade lay, as if they had fallen, on one side of the lace on the hat, and the same marvellous colour lined the lace parasol, that added the last touch of perfection to the costume.

“Didn’t that young earl, Lord Balindale, die on his twenty-first birthday? I’d expect that dress and all to be the end of him,” said Florimel, regarding her mother literally with open mouth and eyes.