Page:Points of view (Repplier).djvu/191

Rh greed, it was not without solid justification. If she drove a hard bargain with Mr. Wortley, stipulating most unromantically for her marriage settlement before she ran away with him, be it remembered that upon this auspicious occasion she was compelled to act as her own guardian; and if she had an inexplicable fancy for wearing her old clothes, the dimity petticoat, and the gray stockings, and the faded green brocade riding-jacket which so deeply offended Walpole's fastidious eyes, let us deal charitably with a fault in which she has but few feminine successors. Those were times when fashions had not yet learned to change with such chameleon-like speed, and people did occasionally wear their old clothes with an unblushing effrontery that would be well-nigh disgraceful to-day. Silks and satins, laces and furbelows, were all of the costliest description, and their owners were chary of discarding them, or even of lightly exposing them to ruin. Emile Souvestre's languid lady, who proves the purity of her blood, somewhat after the manner of the princess and the rose leaf, by supercilious indifference to the fate of her velvet mantle in a snowstorm, could hardly have