She threw up her hands.
“Mais voila! Your dress had to be different! See the tulle, m’mselle, which comes from France, the silk, which is from China and the ribbons, which are of a quality you are unlikely to find again.”
“It is very lovely,” Alida answered almost reverently.
After the severity of her grey dresses, the gown she now wore made her feel as if she was dressed in a celestial cloud.
It had a new crinoline of French whalebone, so light and yet so perfectly balanced that it gave the dress an artistry that she knew could never have been achieved by an English dressmaker.
Her waist looked tiny and her bertha of lace, sparkling and glimmering with diamanté, seemed so insubstantial that it might have been made by fairy fingers.
And this was only to be the background for the orch
