for Sunday at the convent; but no longer appropriate outside. Really, I must speak to the marchesa—parents are so slow to see the differences in their own family. Gheta has been a little overemphasized.
"I wonder," she continued with glowing vivacity, "if you would allow me—I assure you it would give me the greatest pleasure in the world. . . . Your figure is a thousand times better than mine; but, thank heaven, I'm still slender. . . . A little evening dress from Vienna! It should really do you very well. Will you accept it from me? I'd like to give you something, Lavinia; and it has never been out of its box."
She turned and was out of the room before Lavinia could reply. There was no reason why she shouldn't take a present from Anna—Pier Mantegazza and her father had been lifelong friends, and his wife was an intimate of the Sanvianos. It would not, probably, be black. It wasn't. Anna returned, followed by her maid, who bore carefully over her arm a shimmering mass of glowing pink.
"Now!" Anna Mantegazza cried. "Your hair is very pretty, very original—but hardly for a dress by Verlat. Sara!"
The maid moved quietly forward and directed an appraising gaze at Lavinia. She was a flat-hipped Englishwoman, with a cleft chin and enigmatic greenish eyes.
"I see exactly, madame," she assured Anna; and with her deft dry hands she took down Lavinia's laboriously arranged hair.
She drew it back from the brow apparently as simply as before, twisted it into a low knot slightly eccentric in
