"Now, mademoiselle, here is a very distinguished lady--This is my right hand," said Madame Clementine, turning to Regina. "Now, something very _chic_. Yes, look Mrs. Whittaker well over. You see, Gabrielle looks from this point and from that point, she takes in the whole. It is not with us to sell any hat that comes first, but to sell madame a hat that will always give madame satisfaction when she looks in the glass." "Mrs. Whittaker has not been very pleased with her milliner heretofore," said Madame Florence. "Ah madame, now you will never go anywhere else. My clients never leave me, because I believe in what you English call 'the personal note.' We have models--oh yes, that is absolutely necessary, because we have ladies who come in and say, 'I want a hat, I want to wear it now,' and they pay for it and go away. Well, we must supply their needs, but, when we have regular clients, we like to have a day or two of notice, to see the dress madame is wearing, the mood madame is in, and her state of health, then we make a toque that is madame's toque, not a toque that you will meet three times between this and Oxford Street." "If you suit me," said Regina, "and give me something that I can go home in, I will put myself unreservedly in your hands in the future. I know little or nothing about dress," she went on, with a superior, platform kind of air--an assertion which made the lively Frenchwoman positively shudder--"yet I am feminine enough to wish to be well dressed." "Ah, we will satisfy madame. Well, Gabrielle?" "I think," said little Mademoiselle Gabrielle, "that madame will find the toque that came down yesterday would suit her as well as anything not specially made for her. I will get it, madame." She disappeared into the next room, returning with a large black toque in her hand. It was light in fabric, it was bright with jet, and a couple of handsome black plumes fell over the coiffure at the back. "Ah, yes, Gabrielle, yes. Now try it on, madame. Not with those pins, they do not fit with the style of the hat. Madame will not mind to buy hat-pins?" "If they are not ruinous," said Regina, who was in a very much "in for a penny, in for a pound" kind of mind. "Antoinette, Antoinette, bring the box of 'at-pins," said Mademoiselle Gabrielle. Immediately another little French girl came out carrying a large tray of hat-pins. "Madame is not in mourning? We will not have jet--no, no! Now these?" She pounced upon some cut-steel hat-pins which matched the ornaments on the hat, and then with deft and soft little fingers she firmly fixed the toque on Regina's head. "You see," said Madame Clementine, spreading her hands, and looking at Madame Florence for approval. "Yes, that is the hat for madame. Regard yourself, madame--give madame the 'and-glass."