“Oh! if you want a fifteen hundred dollar shawl, it is an easy thing to get. Shall I go with you to the lace counter?” said Eva, quite unconscious of the stranger’s regard. “But it must have a morning-glory vine running through it, leaves and bells like hers, only more of ’em. I’m resolved that our church shall see no costlier shawl than Richard Carter’s lady wears, while it sends up a steeple. Now just tell that young man to show us the very best he’s got. Nothing less than fifteen hundred, understand.” The light-haired clerk heard all this conversation, and followed the party up to the lace counter, where he became very officious in exhibiting shawls, to which he affixed enormous prices with a solemn gravity of countenance that impressed Mrs. Richard Carter greatly. This helped her to fix upon a beautiful fabric, certainly, but one she would not have deigned to purchase at its real value, which was just five hundred dollars less than the depletion of that huge roll of greenbacks with which the good lady went armed on her shopping excursions. “There,” she said, crushing the money she had left into her reticule-purse, and winding the chain about her wrist and little finger, on which she wore a great diamond ring outside the glove, “I begin to feel like myself again. You are sure that a higher-priced shawl than that isn’t to be found in New York, young man?” “Positive of it, madam: for I don’t believe there is another salesman in New York that would have the courage to set that figure,” he muttered, after the first brief reply. “Not another imported. Rest content that you have _the_ shawl of the season, madam. Shall I send it to your carriage?” “Yes, give it to my footman, a tall fellow in maroon livery, with a gold band. You’ll see Carter’s and my monogram on the carriage-door.” The clerk went away with a droll look in his eyes, and a smile struggling on his lip; for he was well acquainted with the class of persons to which his customer belonged—a class that, like many other strange things in social life, is an offshoot of a civil war, which has served to vulgarize wealth attained by accident or fraud, until refined people shrink from competition with it in sensitive shame. “I’m ever so much obliged to you for showing off the patterns for me,” said Mrs. Carter, turning toward Eva with cordial warmth. “The people always are obliging in this establishment; know in an instant when a lady carries the look of money in her face; but I must say, that you are the most stylish girl that I’ve seen here yet; was struck with you the first time, wasn’t I, Herman?” Here Mrs. Carter turned in search of her brother, who had retreated out of hearing.