t a lengthy and painstaking toilette.

It was only a simple ninon dress, it was only a home-made hat, she owned
neither jewels nor laces, nor valuable accessories of any sort to give a
_cachet_ to the whole, but considering these deficiencies there was the
more reason for being thankful for a graceful figure, for a face with
well-cut features, and deep, level eyes.

Surveying the completed toilette in her glass Katrine first smirked and
then sighed. "Very praiseworthy considering, but when I see Grizel, she
will knock the conceit out of me!" she said to herself as she put the
dressing-table in order with a few swift touches, and crossed the
passage to tap at the door of the guest chamber.

"May I come in?"

"What ho!" sounded cheerily from within, and Katrine entered to behold a
Romney picture in grey chiffon pirouetting before the glass, a
ridiculous buckram bandeau pressed turban-like on her head, to which she
was endeavouring to anchor a vast hat, encircled by sweeping white
feathers. The feathers swept, they did not soar, a Grizel-like
distinction between beauty and fashion; there was not a touch of colour
about her, except for the coral brightness of her lips. Katrine felt an
instant conviction that ninon was heavy, that colour was vulgar, that
every item of her own toilette was detestable and ill-chosen. She stood
staring in the doorway, and even as she stood the door of Martin's room
opened, at the opposite side of the passage.

He would have passed on without a glance towards the opened room;
Katrine in her friend's place would have dodged hastily into a corner
rather than have been discovered in the unbecoming stage of bandeau
_sans_ hat, but Grizel hailed him with a cheerful cry:

"Halloa, you man thing! Look upon me, and thank your stars you are not
a woman. I've _got_ to balance this tent upon my head, and nothing
short of clamps will do it. And there's one hairpin, a fiendish
anarchist of a hairpin, simply stacking into my scalp! ... Which would
you rather,--keep the car waiting while I take it down and do it again,
or have me scratching at my head all the afternoon, at the most
compromising moments? Put your fingers in, Katrine! Prod about! Can
you feel it? Not that one, no! For the land's sake don't scatter my
curls on the floor. That's him! That's him! Good girl! ... What a
mussiful relief... Now for the skewers... Deadly, ain't they? But I
have screws for the ends, so you can b