United States or China ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
What should she wear? how should she act? What if she made some absurd blunder, betraying her plebeian birth and breeding? What if she mortified her thin-skinned husband? Oh! why was it necessary to go at all? "My dear child," her husband said, kissing her good-humoredly, "it isn't worth that despairing face. Just put on one of your pretty dinner-dresses, a flower in your hair, and your pearls.
She had not spent her life among the rich and fashionable without having learned every detail of the trappings of a rich and fashionable marriage. She had calculated long ago just how many dinner-dresses, how many tea-gowns and how much lacy lingerie would go to make up the outfit of the future Countess of Altringham.
Cullerton to dinner, for she was leaving for Madrid next day, her luggage having already been sent to the station cloak-room, she told me. We understood that Mr. and Mrs. Cullerton were also coming. We did not put on dinner-dresses as Mr. De Gex said he intended to take us to a show at Olympia afterwards.
For want of time to do any better, they gave her for company, the cure of Vastville, the local physician, the receiver of taxes, and recorder of deeds, all of whom were tolerably frequent guests at the chateau, and great admirers of Julia. It was doubtless not a great deal; it was enough, however, to furnish to the baroness an occasion for wearing one of her handsome dinner-dresses.
There was a white dress which could be sent to the cleaner's, and an old pink one whose superfluous breadths could be combined with lace and achieve wonders. "Indeed, I think I shall be very well off for dinner-dresses," said Emily. "Nobody expects me to change often. Every one knows if they notice at all." She did not know she was humble-minded and of an angelic contentedness of spirit.
This point settled, she flung open her door, calling imperiously down the passage: "Celeste!" and adding, as the French maid appeared: "I want to look over all my dinner-dresses." Considering the extent of Miss Spragg's wardrobe her dinner-dresses were not many. She had ordered a number the year before but, vexed at her lack of use for them, had tossed them over impatiently to the maid.
Word Of The Day