She received an answer that there were none.
Disappointed, she returned home, and spent the remainder of the day in driving about with Madame Von Bruyin among the most fashionable shops.
The woman of vast wealth displayed, perhaps, more extravagance than taste in the selection of her costumes. She carried in her hand a slip cut from a newspaper, describing at great length, and very minutely, the dresses and jewels of some “royal highness,” who had just married an imperial prince, and she was resolved to have fac-similes of each dress, with additional dresses of, if possible, still more beautiful styles and more expensive materials.
Her interviews with Worth, Pingen and other “celebrated” man-milliners or ladies’ tailors (as you please) occupied her the whole day, so that late in the evening she returned with Lilith, almost exhausted with fatigue.
As that day passed, so passed many others.
Lilith, on going early in the morning to the post-office to inquire for letters directed to E. W. H., would meet nothing but heart-wearying disappointment, and on returning home would be required to attend Madame Von Bruyin on her round among jewelers, milliners and modistes.
Madame Von Bruyin, with the most amiable intentions, embarrassed Lilith very much by forcing upon her costly presents in jewelry, Indian shawls, dress patterns, and so forth; for how could the wealthy and good-natured baroness make such magnificent purchases for herself, and before the eyes of her pretty young companion, and not give her beautiful adornings? And though Lilith shrank from these offerings, and declared that such splendors were not suited to her condition, the baroness persisted in pressing them upon her, declaring that they were all most peculiarly fitted for her, having been designed and manufactured to adorn youth and beauty just such as hers.
As day after day passed with the disappointment of the morning, and the wearying round of the afternoon, Lilith grew heart-sick and brain-sick over it all. The splendors of the preparations for the approaching wedding were in such dissonance to her anxious and despairing mood that, young and beautiful as she was, she began to take a strong distaste to finery, and to wish herself among the plain Methodists of Aunt Sophie’s humble boarding-house.
Lilith longed for sobriety and repose, while her life seemed to pass in whirlwind and lightning.
She had formed her resolution, however, and it was this: