’Yes, we are very comfortable; you must come and see us.  You are at the Shelbourne, I believe?’

‘Come to tea with us,’ cried Violet.  ‘We are always at home about five.’

‘We shall be delighted,’ returned Mrs. Barton.

Mrs. Scully’s acquaintance with Mrs. Symond was of the slightest; but, knowing that claims to fashion in Dublin are judged by the intimacy you affect with the dressmaker, she shook her warmly by the hand, and addressed her as dear Mrs. Symond.  To the Christian name of Helen none less than a Countess dare to aspire.

’And how well you are looking, dear Mrs. Symond; and when are you going to take your daughters to the Castle?’

‘Oh, not for some time yet; my eldest is only sixteen.’

Mrs. Symonds had three daughters to bring out, and she hoped when her feet were set on the redoubtable ways of Cork Hill, her fashionable customers would extend to her a cordial helping hand.  Mrs. Symonds’ was one of the myriad little schemes with which Dublin is honeycombed, and although she received Mrs. Scully’s familiarities somewhat coldly, she kept her eyes fixed upon Violet.  The insidious thinness of the girl’s figure, and her gay, winsome look interested her, and, as if speaking to herself, she said: 

’You will want something very sweet; something quite pure and lovely for Miss Scully?’

Mother and daughter were instantly all attention, and Mrs. Symond continued: 

’Let me see, I have some Surat silk that would make up sweetly.  Miss Cooper, will you have the kindness to fetch those rolls of Surat silk we received yesterday from Paris?’

Then, beautiful as a flower harvesting, the hues and harmonies of earth, ocean, and sky fell before the ravished eyes.  The white Surat silk, chaste, beautiful, delicious as that presentiment of shared happiness which fills a young girl’s mind when her fancy awakens in the soft spring sunlight; the white faille with tulle and garlands of white lilac, delicate and only as sensuous as the first meetings of sweethearts, when the may is white in the air and the lilac is in bloom on the lawn; trains of blue sapphire broche looped with blue ostrich feathers, seductive and artificial as a boudoir plunged in a dream of Ess. bouquet; dove-coloured velvet trains adorned with tulips and tied with bows of brown and pink—­temperate as the love that endures when the fiery day of passion has gone down; bodices and trains of daffodil silk, embroidered with shaded maple-leaves, impure as lamp-lit and patchouli-scented couches; trains of white velouture festooned with tulle; trails of snowdrops, icy as lips that have been bought, and cold as a life that lives in a name.

The beautiful silks hissed as they came through the hands of the assistants, cat-like the velvet footfalls of the velvet fell; it was a witches’ Sabbath, and out of this terrible caldron each was to draw her share of the world’s gifts.  Smiling and genial, Mrs. Symond stirred the ingredients with a yard measure; the girls came trembling, doubting, hesitating; and the anxious mothers saw what remained of their jeopardized fortunes sliding in a thin golden stream into the flaming furnace that the demon of Cork Hill blew with unintermittent breath.