All was still, save for the slight noises Folter made,
as, like a machine, she went on heartlessly brushing her
mistress's hair, which kept emitting little crackles, as of
dissatisfaction with her handling. Mary would now take a good
gaze at the lovely creature, now abstract herself from the
visible, and try to call up the vision of her as the real Hesper,
not a Hesper dressed up--a process which had in it hope for the
lady, but not much for the dress upon the bed. At last Folter had
done her part.
"I suppose you _must_ see it on!" said Hesper, and she rose
up.
Folter jerked herself to the bed, took the dress, arranged it on
her arms, got up on a chair, dropped it over her mistress's head,
got down, and, having pulled it this way and that for a while,
fastened it here, undone it there, and fastened it again, several
times, exclaimed, in a tone whose confidence was meant to
forestall the critical impertinence she dreaded:
"There, ma'am! If you don't look the loveliest woman in the room,
I shall never trust my eyes again."
Mary held her peace, for the commonplace style of the dress but
added to her dissatisfaction with the color. It was all puffed
and bubbled and blown about, here and there and everywhere, so
that the form of the woman was lost in the frolic shapelessness
of the cloud. The whole, if whole it could be called, was a
miserable attempt at combining fancy and fashion, and, in result,
an ugly nothing.
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