Monica, who has had Kit to help her,--such an admiring, enthusiastic, flattering Kit,--is soon redressed, and has run down stairs, and nearly into Desmond's arms, who, of course, is waiting on the lowest step to receive her. She is now waltzing with him, with a heart as light as her feet. Hermia's progress has been slow, but Miss Fitzgerald's slowest of all, the elaborate toilet and its accessories taking some time to arrange themselves; she has been annoyed, too, by Olga Bohun, during the earlier part of the evening, and consequently feels it her duty to stay in her room for a while and take it out of her maid. So long is she, indeed, that Madam O'Connor (most attentive of hostesses) feels it her duty to come upstairs to find her. She _does_ find her, giving way to diatribes of the most virulent, that have Olga Bohun for their theme. Mrs. Fitzgerald, standing by, is listening to, and assisting in, the defamatory speeches. "Hey-day! what's the matter now?" says Madam, with a _bonhommie_ completely thrown away. Miss Fitzgerald has given the reins to her mortification, and is prepared to hunt Olga to the death. "I think it is disgraceful the license Mrs. Bohun allows her tongue," she says, angrily, still smarting under the speech she had goaded Olga into making her an hour ago. "We have just been talking about it. She says the most wounding things, and accuses people openly of thoughts and actions of which they would scorn to be guilty. And this, too, when her own actions are so hopelessly faulty, so _sure_ to be animadverted upon by all decent people." "Yes, yes, indeed," chimes in her mother, as in duty bound. Her voice is feeble, but her manner vicious. "The shameful way in which she employs nasty unguents of all kinds, and tries by every artificial means to heighten any beauty she may possess, is too absurdly transparent not to be known by all the world," goes on the irate Bella. "Who run may read the rouge and veloutine that cover her face. And as for her lids, they are so blackened that they are positively _dirty_! Yet she pretends she has handsome eyes and lashes!" "But, my dear, she may well lay claim to her lashes. All the Egyptian charcoal in the world could not make them long and curly. Nature is to be thanked for them." "You can defend her if you like," says Bella, hysterically, "but to my mind her conduct is--is positively _immoral_. It is cheating the public into the belief that she has a skin when she hasn't." "But I'm sure she has: we can all see it," says Madam O'Connor, somewhat bewildered by this sweeping remark. "No, you can't. I defy you to see it, it is so covered with pastes and washes, and everything; she uses every art you can conceive."