d extravagant. Finding her companion was
unusually silent this morning, she gave up her thoughts to the devising
of a special toilet for the Bath.

These garments were so hideous, she told herself, that it was no wonder
people looked such guys in them. Still there was no reason why she
should not have something _chic_ and novel for herself--something which
should arouse the envy of, and make the wearer appear quite different
to, the other women.

The choice of style was easy enough--something Grecian and artistic--but
the material discomposed her. It was hardly possible to have a bath of
this description without one's garment getting into a moist and clinging
condition--leaving alone the after processes of shampooing, _douche_,
and plunge. So silk, or satin, or woollen material was out of the
question, and cotton was common, not to say vulgar.

She knitted her brows with a vigour demanded by so absorbing a subject:
the white head-cloth fell off, and she felt that her fringe was all out
of curl and lay straight on her forehead in most unbecoming fashion.
That also would have to be considered in the question of costume--a
head-dress which should combine use and ornament. The idea of having
only a wet, white rag on one's head! No wonder people looked "objects!"
Perhaps it would be better to coil the hair about the brow and have no
fringe, or at least only a few loose locks that would look equally well,
straight or curled.

As Mrs Ray Jefferson was taking all this trouble about her personal
appearance, when that appearance would only gratify the sight of a few
members of her own sex who were generally too much taken up with their
own ailments or complaints to care what their fellow-sufferers looked
like, it shows the fallacy of a popular superstition that women only
care to dress for men. Believe me, no--they dress for critics, the
critics of their own sex, who with one contemptuous glance can sweep a
_toilette_ into insignificance, and make its wearer miserable, or, by
some envious approbation, are reluctantly compelled to bestow on it the
seal of success.

Is it for men, think you, that those delicate _nuances_ and tints and
shades are harmonised and put together? Such a conceit is only
pardonable in a set of beings who possess not the delicate faculty of
"detail," and who, with a limited knowledge of even cardinal colours,
describe the graces and beauties of a _toilette_ by saying the wearer
had on somethin