The Metropolis

not see the humour of this, at least not until they had told him of another paragraph which had appeared some time before: stating that Mrs. Landis had gone to acquire residence in South Dakota, taking with her thirty-five trunks and a poodle; and that "Leanie" Hopkins, the handsome young stock-broker, had taken a six months' vow of poverty, chastity, and obedience.

And yet Mrs. Landis was "in" Society! And moreover, she spent nearly as much upon her clothes as Miss Yvette, and the clothes were quite as conspicuous; and if the papers did not print pages about them, it was not because Mrs. Landis was not perfectly willing. She was painted and made up quite as frankly as any chorus girl on the stage. She laughed a great deal, and in a high key, and she and her friends told stories which made Montague wish to move out of the way.

Mrs. Landis had for some reason taken a fancy to Alice, and invited her home to lunch with her twice during the show. And after they had got home in the evening, the girl sat upon the bed in her fur-trimmed wrapper, and told Montague and his mother and Mammy Lucy all about her visit.

"I don't believe that woman has a thing to ■do or to think about in the world except to wear clothes!" she said. "Why, she has adjustable mirrors on ball-bearings, so that she can see every part of her skirts! And she gets all her gowns from Paris, four times a year — she says there are four seasons now, instead of two!

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I thought that my new clothes amounted to something, but my goodness, when I saw hers !" Then AHce went on to describe the unpacking of fourteen trunks, which had just come up from the custom-house that day. Mrs. Virginia's coutouriere had her photograph and her colouring (represented in actual pamts) and a figure made up from exact measurements; and so every one of the garments would fit her perfectly. Each one came stuffed with tissue paper and held in place by a lattice-work of tape; and attached to each gown was a piece of the fabric, from which her shoemaker would make shoes or slippers. There were street-costumes and opera wraps, robes de chambre and tea-gowns, reception dresses, and wonderful ball and dinner gowns. Most of these latter were to be embroidered with jewellery before they were worn, and imitation jewels were sewn on, to show how the real ones were to be placed. These garments were made of real lace or Parisian embroidery, and the prices paid for them were almost impossible to credit. Some of them were made of lace so filmy that the women who made them had to sit in damp cellars, because the sunlight would dry the fine threads and they would break; a single yard of the lace represented forty days of labour. There was a pastel "batiste de sole" Pompadour robe, embroidered with cream silk flowers, which had cost one thousand dollars. There was a hat to go with it, which had cost a hundred and twenty-five, and shoes of grey antelope skin, buckled with mother of pearl, which had cost forty. There

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was a gorgeous and intricate ball-dress of pale green chiffon satin, with orchids embroidered in oxidised silver, and a long court train, studded with diamonds — and this had cost six thousand dollars without the jewels! And there was an auto coat which had cost three thousand; and an opera wrap made in Leipsic, of white unborn baby lamb, lined with ermine, which had cost twelve thousand — with a thousand additional for a hat to match! Mrs. Landis thought nothing of paying thirty-five dollars for a lace handkerchief, or sixty dollars for a pair of spun silk hose, or two hundred dollars for a pearl and gold handled parasol trimmed with cascades of chiflfon, and made, like her hats, one for each gown.

"And she insists that these things are worth the money," said Alice. "She says it's not only the material in them, but the ideas. Each costume is a study, like a picture. 'I pay for the creative genius of the artist,' she said to me — 'for his ability to catch my ideas and apply them to my personality — my complexion and hair and eyes. Sometimes I design my own costumes, and so I know what hard work it is I"'

Mrs. Landis came from one of New York's oldest families, and she was wealthy in her own right; she had a palace on Fifth Avenue, and now that she had turned her husband out, she had nothing at all to put in it except her clothes. Alice told about the places in which she kept them — it was like a museum ! There was a gown-room, made dust-proof, of polished hardwood, and with tier upon tier of long poles run-

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