To be sure, Mrs.Fowler's gown may have been two seasons old, but it was covered with rare laces, which she had picked up during her summers abroad; and her pearls--the string was short, but really good, for she had matched it in Paris--shone, rich and costly, around her still beautiful neck.

After one of these dinners the family lived on scraps and looked at fading flowers for days, while Mrs.Fowler, with the air of one who has done her duty, sat upstairs before the little French writing-desk in her room, and patiently added accounts from morning till night.

A strained look would come into her plump, firm face, three little wrinkles would appear between her eyebrows, and her blue eyes, circled by faint shadows, would grow dark and anxious.

Then, when at last the accounts were finished and the unpaid bills laid away in a pigeonhole, she would remark with animation: "I don't see how on earth I am ever to pay all these bills," and, after changing her dress, set out to bring her butcher or her grocer to reason.

On one of these days she took Gabriella (they went in the stage because she had given up her carriage) on a hunt for bargains in underwear, and, to the girl's astonishment, her mother-in-law, who presented so opulent an appearance on the surface, purchased for herself a supply of cheap and badly made chemises and nightgowns.