Quality had been essential in every hat that went from Brandywine & Plummer's millinery department; and Gabriella, deriving from a mother who worked only in fine linen, rejected instinctively the cheap, the tawdry, and the inferior.

She had heard a customer complain one day of the quality of the velvet on a hat Madame had made to order; and pausing to look at the material as she went out, she had decided that the most prosperous house in New York could not survive many incidents of that deplorable sort.

To be sure, such material would not have been supplied to Mrs.Pletheridge, or even to the elder Mrs.Fowler, who, though Southern, was always particular and very often severe; but here again, since this cheap hat had been sold at a high price, was a vital weakness in Madame's business philosophy.
On the whole, there were many of Madame's methods which might be improved; and when Gabriella passed through the ivory and gold doorway into the street, she had convinced herself that she was preminently designed by Nature to undertake the necessary work of improvement.

The tawdriness she particularly disliked--the trashy gold and ivory of the decorations, the artificial rose-bushes from which the dust was never removed, the sumptuous velvet carpets which were not taken up in the summer.
While she was crossing the street a man joined her; and glancing up as soon as she was clear of the traffic, she saw that it was Judge Crowborough.

In the last seven years her dislike for him had gradually disappeared, and though she had never found him attractive, she had grown to accept the general estimate of his character and ability.