"Why not?" said Mrs. Williams, opening her great eyes with such an air of utter ignorance that it was impossible to explain. It was easy to see that she need not be afraid of trusting her husband out of her sight, for a more devoted and admiring one I never saw, whether with her or away from her talking of "Loulou" and her charms, as if sure of sympathy. But we had our doubts as to how much she returned his attachment, and Minnie said it was easy to see that she only tolerated him; and we all thought her unappreciative, to say the least. He was very much interested in her dress, and spent a great deal of time in choosing and buying beautiful ornaments and laces and stuffs for her, which she insisted on having made up in her own way, languidly remarking that it was enough for Willie to make her a fright on canvas, without doing so in real life. Blanche Livermore said she must have some affection for him, to sit so much to him, for he had painted about a hundred pictures of her in different styles, each one worse than the last. You would have thought her hideous if you had only seen them; but Willie's artist friends, some of them very distinguished, had painted her too, and had made her into a regular beauty. Opinions differed about her looks; but those who liked her the least had to allow that she was fine-looking, though some said it was greatly owing to her style of dress. We all called it shockingly conspicuous at first, and then went home and tried to make our things look as much like hers as we possibly could, which was very little; for, as we afterwards found out, they came from a modiste at Paris who worked for only one or two private customers, and whose costumes had a kind of combination of the fashionable and the artistic which it seemed impossible for any one here to hit. We used to wonder how poor Mrs. Latham would feel, could she rise from her grave, to behold her daughter's gowns, tight as a glove, and in the evening low and long to a degree, her high-heeled French shoes, and everything her mother had thought most sinful. Her hair had grown a deeper, richer shade abroad, and she had matched it to perfection, and one of Willie's pictures of her, with the real and false all down her back together, looked like the burning bush. She was in slight mourning for an old great-uncle who had left her a nice little sum of money; and we thought, if she were so inimitable now, what would she be when she put on colours? We did better in modelling our children's clothes after hers, and I must say she was very good-natured about lending us her patterns. She had a boy and girl, beautiful little creatures, but they looked rather delicate, which she did not seem to realise at all; she was very amiable in her ways to them, but cool, just as she was to their father.