"I should like to see it on first," said Mary: she was in doubt whether the color--bright, to suggest the brightest of sunset-clouds--would suit Hesper's complexion. Then, again, she had always associated the name _Hesper_ with a later, a solemnly lovely period of twilight, having little in common with the color so voluminous in the background. Hesper had a good deal of appreciative faculty, and knew therefore when she liked and when she did not like a thing; but she had very little originative faculty--so little that, when anything was wrong, she could do next to nothing to set it right. There was small originality in taking a suggestion for her part from her name, and less in the idea, following by concatenation, of adopting for her costume sunset colors upon a flimsy material, which might more than hint at clouds. She had herself, with the assistance of Sepia and Folter, made choice of the particular pink; but, although it continued altogether delightful in the eyes of her maid, it had, upon nearer and pro-longed acquaintance, become doubtful in hers; and she now waited, with no little anxiety, the judgment of Mary, who sat silently thinking. "Have you nothing to say?" she asked, at length, impatiently. "Please, ma'am," replied Mary, "I must think, if I am to be of any use. I am doing my best, but you must let me be quiet." Half annoyed, half pleased, Hesper was silent, and Mary went on thinking. All was still, save for the slight noises Folter made, as, like a machine, she went on heartlessly brushing her mistress's hair, which kept emitting little crackles, as of dissatisfaction with her handling. Mary would now take a good gaze at the lovely creature, now abstract herself from the visible, and try to call up the vision of her as the real Hesper, not a Hesper dressed up--a process which had in it hope for the lady, but not much for the dress upon the bed. At last Folter had done her part. "I suppose you _must_ see it on!" said Hesper, and she rose up. Folter jerked herself to the bed, took the dress, arranged it on her arms, got up on a chair, dropped it over her mistress's head, got down, and, having pulled it this way and that for a while, fastened it here, undone it there, and fastened it again, several times, exclaimed, in a tone whose confidence was meant to forestall the critical impertinence she dreaded: "There, ma'am! If you don't look the loveliest woman in the room, I shall never trust my eyes again." Mary held her peace, for the commonplace style of the dress but added to her dissatisfaction with the color. It was all puffed and bubbled and blown about, here and there and everywhere, so that the form of the woman was lost in the frolic shapelessness of the cloud. The whole, if whole it could be called, was a miserable attempt at combining fancy and fashion, and, in result, an ugly nothing.