The Masons, with himself, were engaged to attend a large party on
the last evening of January. Without analyzing the impulse that
constrained him to do so, he had refrained from reminding Rosa that
his stay in Washington was so nearly over, and, with masculine
consistency, he was half disposed to be affronted that she had
forgotten what he had said to her of its extent. He had never seen
her more lively--in more radiant spirits and looks--than she was
upon the night of the 30th. He had dropped into her aunt's parlor
about ten o'clock, and detected Rosa in the act of dragging her new
ball-dress from the box in which the mantua maker had sent it home.
"Conceive, if you can--but you can't, being a man--what I have
undergone for an hour and more!" she cried, at seeing him. "My
treasure--the darlingest love of a dress I have ever ordered--was
brought in exactly two seconds before a brace of honorables--
lumbering machines that they are! knocked at the door. So, lest they
should brand me as a frivolous doll (as if anybody with a soul, and
an infinitesimal degree of love for the beautiful, COULD help
admiring the divine thing!), I pushed the poor box under the sofa,
and there it has lain in ignominious neglect, like a pearl of purest
ray serene smothered in an oyster, all the time they were here. I
was purposely cross and stupid, too, in the hope of getting rid of
them the sooner. If you despise what most of your undiscriminating
sex call fancy articles, consider a woman's fondness for a ravishing
robe despicable and irrational, Mr. Chilton, you need not look this
way. You could hardly have a severer--certainly not a more
appropriate--punishment."
"You depreciate my aesthetic proclivities," he rejoined, catching
her tone. "You would not trust my bungling fingers to help excavate
the gem, I know; but I may surely use my eyes--admire, as we bid
children do--with my hands behind my back."
Notwithstanding his boast of knowingness in the mysteries of
feminine apparel, he could not have told of what material the divine
robe was made--except that it was some shiny white stuff, with wide
embroidery upon the flounces. But Rosa, her aunt, and cousin had
gone into ecstacies over it, and instigated by kind-hearted Mrs.
Mason, the enraptured owner had rushed off to Mrs. Mason's chamber
to try it on, returning presently in full array, elate at the
"perfect fit," and insisting upon a unanimous declaration that she
"had never before worn anything one-thousandth part as becoming."