rs get their own way.

Cecile Beauvisage, a girl of nineteen, had put on a gown of gray silk
trimmed with gimp and tassels of a deeper shade of gray, making the
front of the gown look like a pelisse. The corsage, ornamented with
buttons and caps to the sleeves, ended in a point in front, and was
laced up behind like a corset. This species of corset defined the back,
the hips, and the bust perfectly. The skirt, trimmed with three rows of
fringe, fell in charming folds, showing by its cut and its make the hand
of a Parisian dressmaker. A pretty fichu edged with lace covered her
shoulders; around her throat was a pink silk neckerchief, charmingly
tied, and on her head was a straw hat ornamented with one moss rose. Her
hands were covered with black silk mittens, and her feet were in bronze
kid boots. This gala air, which gave her somewhat the appearance of the
pictures in a fashion-book, delighted her father.

Cecile was well made, of medium height, and perfectly well-proportioned.
She had braided her chestnut hair, according to the fashion of 1839, in
two thick plaits which followed the line of the face and were fastened
by their ends to the back of her head. Her face, a fine oval, and
beaming with health, was remarkable for an aristocratic air which she
certainly did not derive from either her father or her mother. Her eyes,
of a light brown, were totally devoid of that gentle, calm, and almost
timid expression natural to the eyes of young girls. Lively, animated,
and always well in health, Cecile spoiled, by a sort of bourgeois
matter-of-factness, and the manners of a petted child, all that
her person presented of romantic charm. Still, a husband capable of
reforming her education and effacing the traces of provincial life,
might still evolve from that living block a charming woman of the world.

Madame Beauvisage had had the courage to bring up her daughter to good
principles; she had made herself employ a false severity which enabled
her to compel obedience and repress the little evil that existed in the
girl's soul. Mother and daughter had never been parted; thus Cecile had,
what is more rare in young girls than is generally supposed, a purity of
thought, a freshness of heart, and a naivete of nature, real, complete,
and flawless.

"Your dress is enough to make me reflect," said Madame Beauvisage. "Did
Simon Giguet say anything to you yesterday that you are hiding from me?"

"Dear mamma," said Cecile in her mother