Kitty's brow relaxed at last, as she stood gazing at the reflection in the large glass before her. She saw herself as Artemis--á la Madame de Longueville--in a hunting-dress of white silk, descending to the ankles, embroidered from top to toe in crescents of seed pearls and silver, and held at the waist by a silver girdle. Her throat was covered with magnificent pearls, a Tranmore family possession, lent by Lady Tranmore for the occasion. The slim ankles and feet were cased in white silk, cross-gartered with silver and shod with silver sandals. Her belt held her quiver of white-winged arrows; her bow of ivory inlaid with silver was slung at her shoulder, while across her breast, the only note of color in the general harmony of white, fell a scarf of apple-green holding the horn, also of ivory and silver, which, like the belt and bow, had been designed for her in Madame de Longueville's Paris.
But neither she nor her model would have been finally content with an adornment so delicately fanciful and minute. Both Kitty and the goddess of the Fronde knew that they must hold their own in a crowd. For this there must be diamonds. The sleeves, therefore, on the white arms fell back from diamond clasps; the ivory spear in her right hand was topped by a small genius with glittering wings; and in the masses of her fair hair, bound with pearl fillets, shone the large diamond crescent that Lady Tranmore had foreseen, with one small attendant star at either side.
"Well, upon my word, Kitty!" said a voice from her husband's dressing-room.
"Do you like it?" she cried. Ashe approached. She lifted her horn to her mouth and stood tiptoe. The movement was enchanting; it had in it the youth and freshness of spring woods; it suggested mountain distances and the solitudes of high valleys. Intoxication spoke in Ashe's pulses; he wished the maids had been far away that he might have taken the goddess in his very human arms. Instead of which he stood lazily smiling.
"What Endymion are you calling?" he asked her. "Kitty, you are a dream!"
Kitty pirouetted, then suddenly stopped short and held out a foot.
"Look at those silk things, sir. Nobody but Fanchette could have made them look anything but a botch. But they spoil the dress. And all to please mother and Mrs. Grundy!"