The workroom continued very _throng_ for ten days or so longer, and during this time Kirsteen worked like two women. She had never been so inventive, so full of new combinations. With her white face, and without a smile, she stood over Lady Chatty, that grand lay-figure and advertising medium for the mantua-maker, and made her glorious with beautiful garments--beautiful according to the fashion of the time and all that Kirsteen knew: for no genius (in dress) can over-step these limits. Lady Chatty, full of affection and kindness, soon discovered the something which was wrong. She put her hands on either side of Kirsteen’s face and compelled her friend to look at her. “What ails you, Kirsteen? Oh, what ails you?” “Nothing,” Kirsteen said. “Oh, don’t tell me it is nothing. You look as if you had died and it was the ghost of Kirsteen that was here.” Kirsteen smiled up on the beautiful face looking so anxiously into hers, and said, “Maybe that is just true,” but would say no more. And the business in the workroom was done with a sort of passion by everybody there. They had heard that as soon as the press was over Miss Kirsteen was going away. They did not exchange any exhortations, but by one consent they addressed themselves to their work with an unspoken thought that the sooner they were done the sooner she would be released. It was partly that the sight of her became intolerable to these emotional spectators, who had each a private vision of her own of the tragedy. Had Kirsteen wept and raved and got over it they would have wept with her and consoled her; but the anguish which did not weep, which said nothing, was more than they could bear. They were all silent round the long table, bending over their work, working as some one of them said, “as if it were a large mourning order and all for sum ’un of one’s own.” And the season was just at its end--Kirsteen held her place till the last great ball was over, and then she went away.