Of course, Miss Comstock introduced her charges to the best dressmakers and dispensers of lingerie and millinery (for which service she obtained free of charge all her own clothes). Adelle soon found her own way into the shops of the Rue de la Paix and developed a genuine passion--the first one of her life--for precious stones. It may be remembered that when she was taken as a little girl for the first time into the new home of the trust company, she had been much impressed by the gorgeousness of colored marble and glass there profusely used. For a long time the great banking-room with its dim violet light had remained in her memory as a source of sensuous delight, and as her opportunities had increased she had turned instinctively to things of color and warmth, especially in stones and fabrics. In those public and private exhibitions to which she was constantly conducted as part of her education in art she hung over the cases that contained specimens of new designs in metal and stone. Miss Comstock, perceiving her interest in these toys, encouraged Adelle to try her own hand at the manufacture of jewelry, and engaged a needy woman worker to give her the necessary lessons in the lapidary art. Adelle had acquired considerable sloth from her desultory way of living; nevertheless, when the chance was forced into her hands, she took to the new work with ardor and produced some bungling imitations of the new art, which were much admired at the Villa Ponitowski. Eveline, not to be outdone, took up bookbinding, though she scarcely knew the inside of one book from another. The art of tooling leather was then cultivated by women of fashion in New York: it gave them something to talk about and a chance to play in a studio.