t in Chicago
"society" and throughout the Middle West. A dressmaker from the Rue de la
Paix came over with models and samples, and carried back a huge order and
a plaster reproduction of Theresa's figure, and elaborate notes on the
color of her skin, hair, eyes, and her preferences in shapes of hats. A
jeweler, also of the Rue de la Paix, came with jewels--nearly a million
dollars' worth--for her to make selections. Her boots and shoes and
slippers she got from Rowney, in Fifth Avenue, who, as everybody knows,
makes nothing for less than thirty-five dollars, and can put a hundred
dollars worth of price, if not of value, into a pair of evening slippers.
Theresa was proud of her feet; they were short and plump, and had those
abrupt, towering insteps that are regarded by the people who have them as
unfailing indications of haughty lineage, just as the people who have
flat feet dwell fondly upon the flat feet of the Wittlesbachs, kings in
Bavaria. She was not easy to please in the matter of casements for those
feet; also, as she was very short in stature, she had to get three and a
half extra inches of height out of her heels; and to make that sort of
heel so that it can even be hobbled upon is not easy or cheap. Once
Theresa, fretting about her red-ended nose and muddy skin, had gone to a
specialist. "Let me see your foot," said he; and when he saw the heel, he
exclaimed: "Cut that tight, high-heeled thing out or you'll never get a
decent skin, and your eyes will trouble you by the time you are thirty."
But Theresa, before adopting such drastic measures, went to a beauty
doctor. He assured her that she could be cured without the sacrifice of
the heel, and that the weakness of her eyes would disappear a year or so
after marriage. And he was soon going into ecstasies over her
improvement, over the radiance of her beauty. She saw with his eyes and
ceased to bother about nose or skin--they were the least beautiful of her
beauties, but--"One can't expect to be absolutely perfect. Besides, the
absolutely perfect kind of beauty might be monotonous."

The two weeks before the wedding were the happiest of her life. All day
long, each day, vans were thundering up to the rear doors of Windrift,
each van loaded to bursting with new and magnificent, if not beautiful
costliness. The house was full of the employees of florists, dressmakers,
decorators, each one striving to outdo the other in servility. Theresa
was like an autocratic sover