ed determination. She had laid down a rule for the
care of her person, which she gradually departed from. Though at first
she kept up with the fashions and the little novelties of elegant life,
she was obliged to limit her purchases by the amount of her allowance.
Instead of six hats, caps, or gowns, she resigned herself to one gown
each season. She was so much admired in a certain bonnet that she made
it do duty for two seasons. So it was in everything.

Not unfrequently her artistic sense led her to sacrifice the
requirements of her person to secure some bit of Gothic furniture. By
the seventh year she had come so low as to think it convenient to
have her morning dresses made at home by the best needlewoman in the
neighborhood; and her mother, her husband, and her friends pronounced
her charming in these inexpensive costumes which did credit to her
taste. Her ideas were imitated! As she had no standard of comparison,
Dinah fell into the snares that surround the provincial woman. If a
Parisian woman's hips are too narrow or too full, her inventive wit and
the desire to please help to find some heroic remedy; if she has some
defect, some ugly spot, or small disfigurement, she is capable of making
it an adornment; this is often seen; but the provincial woman--never! If
her waist is too short and her figure ill balanced, well, she makes up
her mind to the worst, and her adorers--or they do not adore her--must
take her as she is, while the Parisian always insists on being taken for
what she is not. Hence the preposterous bustles, the audacious flatness,
the ridiculous fulness, the hideous outlines ingeniously displayed, to
which a whole town will become accustomed, but which are so astounding
when a provincial woman makes her appearance in Paris or among
Parisians. Dinah, who was extremely slim, showed it off to excess, and
never knew a dull moment when it became ridiculous; when, reduced by the
dull weariness of her life, she looked like a skeleton in clothes; and
her friends, seeing her every day, did not observe the gradual change in
her appearance.

This is one of the natural results of a provincial life. In spite of
marriage, a young woman preserves her beauty for some time, and the town
is proud of her; but everybody sees her every day, and when people meet
every day their perception is dulled. If, like Madame de la Baudraye,
she loses her color, it is scarcely noticed; or, again, if she flushes
a little, that is in