Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/13

6 Worth, who is accustomed to furnish figures as well as clothes, had a great reverence for her; in her, Nature, of whom generally speaking he is disposed to think very poorly, did not need his assistance; he thought it extraordinary, but as he could not improve her in that respect, he had to be content with draping Perfection, which he did to perfection of course.

Her face also was left to nature, in a very blamable degree for a woman of fashion. Her friends argued to her that any woman, however fair a skin she might have, must look washed out without enamel or rouge at the least. But the Lady Hilda, conscious of her own delicate bloom, was obdurate on the point.

"I would rather look washed out than caked over," she would reply: which was cruel but conclusive. So she went into the world without painting, and made them all look beside her as if they had come out of a comic opera. In everything else she was, however, as artificial as became her sex, her station, and her century.

She was a very fortunate woman; at least