saw hers!"

Then Alice went on to describe the unpacking of fourteen trunks,
which had just come up from the custom-house that day. Mrs.
Virginia's couturiere had her photograph and her colouring
(represented in actual paints) and a figure made up from exact
measurements; and so every one of the garments would fit her
perfectly. Each one came stuffed with tissue paper and held in place
by a lattice-work of tape; and attached to each gown was a piece of
the fabric, from which her shoemaker would make shoes or slippers.
There were street-costumes and opera-wraps, robes de chambre and
tea-gowns, reception-dresses, and wonderful ball and dinner gowns.
Most of these latter were to be embroidered with jewellery before
they were worn, and imitation jewels were sewn on, to show how the
real ones were to be placed. These garments were made of real lace
or Parisian embroidery, and the prices paid for them were almost
impossible to credit. Some of them were made of lace so filmy that
the women who made them had to sit in damp cellars, because the
sunlight would dry the fine threads and they would break; a single
yard of the lace represented forty days of labour. There was a
pastel "batiste de soie" Pompadour robe, embroidered with cream silk
flowers, which had cost one thousand dollars. There was a hat to go
with it, which had cost a hundred and twenty-five, and shoes of grey
antelope-skin, buckled with mother-of-pearl, which had cost forty.
There was a gorgeous and intricate ball-dress of pale green chiffon
satin, with orchids embroidered in oxidized silver, and a long court
train, studded with diamonds--and this had cost six thousand dollars
without the jewels! And there was an auto-coat which had cost three
thousand; and an opera-wrap made in Leipsic, of white unborn baby
lamb, lined with ermine, which had cost twelve thousand--with a