Honestly, and to be utterly outspoken, it was a comfort to Dolly, in the midst of her misery, to be able to array herself in purple and fine linen. Poor little soul! wretched though she might be and was, she did not feel herself so completely forsaken by God and man when attired in silk velvet and stiff silk as she might if only in a position to appear in a linsey gown. Vanity shall we say? As you please, my readers. The matter is really of little importance; only allow me to remark, there is a vanity near akin to self-respect--a desire to turn the best side of one's life's shield out for the world to see, which often invests poverty itself with a certain grace of reticence and dignity of non complaint, that we look for in vain amongst those who allow the unmended rags and tatters of their lost prosperity to flaunt in the breeze and stimulate the compassion of every passer-by. "That reminds me, Dolly," said Mrs. Werner, after a slight pause. "I meant to buy you a Christmas present." "I am very glad you did not carry out your intention then," retorted Mrs. Mortomley; "for I should not have taken the present." Mrs. Werner laughed. "I do not mean to buy it for you, Dolly," she remarked; "but I shall give it to you nevertheless." "I will not have it," her friend repeated. "I will take nothing from you now, save love and kisses." "Why, my dear?" asked Mrs. Werner. "In the old days Dolly Gerace would have accepted anything Leonora Trebasson offered her as freely as Leonora Trebasson would have taken Dolly's gift, small or large. What has come between us? What have I done, Dolly, that you should now shut the doors of your heart against me?" "I have not shut the doors of my heart against you, Lenny, and you are wicked to say anything of the kind," was the reply. "But it is no longer you and me--it is no longer you and me, and your mother and my aunt, but--" "Finish your sentence, dear," said Mrs. Werner, as Dolly paused, unwilling, in the presence of a man's wife, to terminate her utterance with an ungracious reference to the absent husband. "There is no necessity," answered Mrs. Mortomley; "you know what I mean as well as I do myself." "Let me see if you are right," was the reply, spoken almost caressingly. "You would take anything from me, but you will have nothing from my husband--belonging to or coming from him--directly or indirectly; is not that your standpoint, Dolly?" "Yes," Dolly answered. "I hate to seem ungracious, but I could receive nothing from your hands, knowing you were but the filter through which--" "Mrs. Mortomley, you are eminently unhappy in your suggestions," said her friend. "We need not pursue your curious metaphor to its inevitable end. It is simply because I am Henry Werner's wife, and because, having no fortune of my own, my money comes from him that you refuse my little present."