aught madame's style correctly? I am
perfectly competent to compose a coiffure which shall agree entirely
with the type of Madame la Comtesse, but what if the tailor has been
mistaken--what if the robe turns out a disguise rather than an
enhancement? In that case, adieu to the harmony."

Pilar reassured the sorely-tried master, and exchanged glances of
amusement with Wilhelm. She had described him to Wilhelm beforehand as
a Parisian oddity, and invited him to be present during the visit.
While Anne enveloped her mistress in the white dressing-mantle,
Monsieur Martin laid out the battery of combs, brushes, and
tortoise-shell hair-pins provided by the maid, added, out of his own
box, two hand-glasses, and a box of gold-powder, and began to loosen
the countess' abundant tresses. As the golden waves flowed over the
back of the chair to the ground, he murmured, drawing his fingers
repeatedly through the silken mass:

"What a fleece, Madame la Comtesse! It takes a Spaniard to have such
hair."

He now began rapidly and skillfully to comb, brush, coil, and fasten,
to smooth away here, loosen there, shook the gold dust over it, touched
the locks upon the forehead, placed the diadem, and fell back a step to
review his work. A groan burst from him.

"That is not it! that is not it!" he wailed, and shook his head
dolefully from side to side. "I am not permitted to see the costume of
Madame la Comtesse, I am not to use pads or curling-irons, and yet all
is to be in the grand style--only a diadem--not a flower, not a
feather! No, it will not do." He glared at her for a moment, and then
cried suddenly, "No, it positively will not do!" And before Pilar could
prevent him, he had rapidly pulled out all the hairpins, removed the
diadem, and disarranged with nervous fingers the whole artistic edifice.

"A coiffure that bears my signature must not be allowed to leave my
hands like that," he said. "And yet the ground is burning beneath my
feet. It is three o'clock, and I have not yet lunched."

"Poor Monsieur Martin!" cried Pilar. "Will you have something to eat at
once? They shall serve it to you downstairs."

"Madame la Comtesse is very good, but I have no time to sit down
comfortably at a table. I have all that is necessary in my carriage,
and shall take some slight refreshment there, on my way to my next
client."

"Have you much to do to-day?"

Monsieur Martin drew out a little notebook, with ivory tablets, and a
silver monog