“A richer toilette is of white Liberty silk, with a flounce of magnificent Brussels lace festooned by leaves of the chestnut, formed of white satin wrought in iris beads and silver on white tulle. The whole gown is strewn with like leaves of graduating sizes, and the low corsage has a _berthe_ of Brussels lace ornamented with smaller chestnut leaves as are also the sleeves.” And so on, in unlimited bursts of enthusiasm. I cannot say I am in the least sorry when “modistes” who ‘create’ costumes at forty, fifty and even one hundred and two hundred guineas per gown, are mulcted of some of their unlawful profits by defaulting creditors. In nine cases out of ten they richly deserve it. They are rightly punished, when they accept, with fulsome flattery and servile obsequiousness a “title” as sufficient guarantee for credit, and in the end find out that Her Grace the Duchess, or Miladi the Countess is perhaps more wickedly reckless and unprincipled than any plain Miss, or Mrs. ever born, and that these _grandes dames_ frequently make use of both rank and position to cheat their tradespeople systematically. The tradespeople are entirely to blame for trusting them, and this is daily and continuously proved. But the touching crook-knee’d worship of mere social rank still remains an ingredient of the mercantile nature,--it is inborn and racial,--a kind of microbe in the blood generated there in old feudal times, when, all over the world, pedlars humbly sought the patronage and favour of robber chieftains, and unloaded their packs in the ‘Castle hall’ for the pleasure of the fair ladies who were kept at home in “durance vile” by their rough, unwashen lords. And so perhaps it has chanced through long custom and heritage, that at this present day there is nothing quite so servile in all creation as the spectacle of the ‘modiste’ in attendance on a Duchess, or a ‘ladies’ tailor’ bending himself double while deferentially presuming to measure the hips of a Princess. It is quaint,--it is pitiful,--it is intensely, deliciously comic. And when the price of the garment is never clearly stated, and the bill never sent in for years lest offence is given to ‘Her Grace’ or ‘Her Highness’--by firms that will, nevertheless, have no scruple in sending dunning letters and legal threats to _un_-titled ladies, who may possibly keep them waiting a little for their money, but whose position and credit are more firmly established than those of any ‘great’ personages with handles to their names, it is not without a certain secret satisfaction that one hears of such fawning flunkeys of trade getting well burnt in the fires of loss and disaster. For in any case, it may be taken for granted that they always charge a double, sometimes treble price for a garment or costume, over and above what that garment or costume is really worth, and one may safely presume they base all their calculations on possible loss. It is no uncommon