Dear Child,
I send you this mantle which I hope you will wear; it will not really spoil the character of your Ganymede dress, and from the back it will hide the fact that your legs are very slightly bowed. Your charming face will help to distract eyes from the front view, and this very small flaw in your anatomy will pass unnoticed.
Affectionately yours,
Sarah Garribardine.
She had written it with her own hand. Lady Beatrice stamped with rage, and then flew to her looking-glass. She stood this way and that, and finally came to the conclusion that there might be the faintest substratum of truth in the accusation. The rest of the limbs were not so perfect as her tiny ankles. It would not be safe to risk criticism. So the costume was altered and became a Flora with garlands of roses and long diaphanous draperies—and Gerard and Lady Garribardine watched her entry with the Vermont party with relieved eyes, and the wily aunt said:
"You can achieve the impossible with women, G., if you only appeal to, or wound, their vanity. You must never give orders to one unless she is in love with you—then she glories in obedience—but a modern wife can only be controlled either on the principle of the Irish-man's pig being driven towards Dublin when it was intended for Cork, or by a Machiavellian manipulation of her self-love."
"And then the game is not worth the candle," Mr. Strobridge sighed with a little discouragement. "I wonder, Seraphim, what is worth while? Striving for the infinite, I suppose—certainly the finite things are but Dead Sea fruit."
"Gerard, my poor boy, you make me fear, when you talk like that, that one day you will be profoundly in love!"
"Heaven forbid!—It would upset my digestion. I was thirty-five last month and have to be careful!"
And in her comfortable bed in Berkeley Square, Katherine Bush read "The Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu" far into the night.
Society had not altered in many respects since these hundred and sixty odd years ago, she thought!
The tableaux were the greatest success and a large sum of money was secured for one of Lady Garribardine's pet charities.