"There's been nothing like it since Mrs. Jersey. I used to see people get up on chairs to see Mrs. Jersey go by. Not that I ever thought much of her figure—great, ugly, square shoulders. She started those square shoulders, and they've never really died out."
"Mrs. Germaine's quite another sort of beauty, the pocket Venus style, isn't she? I suppose you've had a lot to do with making her the rage," said the friend admiringly.
"I don't know about that—her kind of figure dresses itself. She's the sort that gets there anyhow. She's got that 'jennysayquoy' air, as the French put it, that makes folk turn round and stare. She gets her looks from her mother; I remember the mother—her name was Arabin—when I was with Cerise. They weren't London people—they was military. Mrs. Arabin had such pretty coaxing ways, same as the daughter has. Cerise used to let her have the things ever so much cheaper than she charged her other customers, but it paid her too."
Germaine breathed a little more easily. He knew now who this woman was. She was a certain Mrs. Bliss, Bella's dressmaker, in her way a famous old lady, whom Bella's set greatly preferred to the other dressmakers in vogue. It was Mrs. Bliss, so he remembered having heard, who had introduced some years ago the picturesque style of dressing with which his sister Fanny found such fault, and which remains loftily indifferent to the fashion.
Oliver recollected now where and when he had seen her; there had been some little trouble about an item in his wife's bill, and Bella had made him go with her to face the formidable Mrs. Bliss in the old-fashioned house in Sackville Street where the dressmaker wielded her powerful sceptre. That was before Bella had become a fashionable beauty, and Mrs. Bliss had been rather short with them both, unwilling to admit that she was wrong, although the figures proving her so stared her in the face.
And then Germaine remembered other occasions with which Mrs. Bliss's name, though not her personality, were associated. He had made out cheques to her, larger cheques than Bella could manage out of her allowance. But that was some time ago; his wife must now have given up dealing with her; and he felt glad, very glad, that this was so. A woman with such a tongue was a danger to society,—not that anyone need believe a word she said....
Suddenly the shrill Cockney voice asked yet another question concerning the beautiful Mrs. Germaine. It was couched in what the speaker would probably have described as perfectly ladylike and delicate language, but its purport was unmistakable, and Germaine made a restless movement; then he became almost rigidly still—a man cannot turn and strike a woman on the mouth.
"N-o-o, I don't think so." Mrs. Bliss spoke guardedly. "She's a lot of gentlemen buzzing around her, but that's only to be expected; and as far as I can hear there's not one that buzzes closer than another. To tell you the truth, Sophy, I'm puzzled about those Germaines. It's no business of mine, of course, but she spends three times as much as she did when I first began dressing her and she don't mind now what she does pay,—very different to what she used to do! It's only the best that's good enough for my lady now."
"Germaine's an army chap, isn't he?"
"He was—and a handsome fellow he is, too. He came into a good bit of money just after they got married, but that must be melting pretty quick. Why, she goes everywhere! Last season she really wore her clothes out. They"—she waved her hand comprehensively round a vague area comprising Marylebone and Mayfair—"scratched and fought with each other in order to get her."