From her standpoint, her dress was simplicity itself; and she had not lived long enough in this outer circle of society to understand that there are different degrees of simplicity, as well as different opinions concerning the meaning of the word.
Her black silk dress was very plainly made, and her seal sacque had been so long worn, that Claire, the millionnaire's daughter, had remarked only last winter that it had served its time and must be supplanted by a new one; the present Claire, of course, did not think of such a thing, but meekly accepted it as part of her cross!
Her plain black velvet hat had no other trimming than the long plume which swept all around it, and had been worn the winter before. How could she be expected to have any conception of the effect of her toilet on the country people by whom she was surrounded. Her world had been so far removed from theirs, that had one told her that to them she seemed dressed like a princess, she would have been bewildered and incredulous.
Her dress was very far from suiting herself. Her mood had been to envelop herself in heaviest black, and shroud her face from curious gaze behind folds of crape. The only reason she had not done so, had been because the strict sense of honor which governed the fallen family would not allow them to add thus heavily to their expenses. Indeed, to have dressed in such mourning as would have alone appeared suitable to them, would have been impossible. The mother had not seemed to feel this much. "It doesn't matter, children," she had said gently; "they know we miss papa; we have no need of crape to help us tell that story, and for ourselves it would not make our sorrow any less heavy." But the girls had shrunk painfully from curious eyes and conjectured curious remarks, and had shed tears in secret over even this phase of the trouble.
The bell whose sharp clang was a continued trial to her cultured ears, ceased its twanging at last, and then it was the wheezy little cabinet organ's turn; and, indeed, those who do not know the capabilities for torture that some of those instruments have, are fortunate. Claire Benedict set her teeth firmly. This was an hundred degrees more painful than the bell, for the name of this was music. How could any person be so depraved in taste as to believe it other than a misnomer!
While the choir of seven voices roared through the hymn, Claire shut her eyes, grasped her hymn-book tightly with both hands, set her lips, and endured. What a tremendous bass it was! How fearfully the leading soprano "sang through her nose," in common parlance, though almost everybody understands that we mean precisely opposite! How horribly the tenor flatted, and how entirely did the alto lose the key more than once during the infliction of those six verses!
The hymn was an old one, a favorite with Claire, as it had been with her father; but as that choir shrieked out the familiar words—
I love her gates, I love the road,
The church adorned with grace,
Stands like a palace built for God,
To show his milder face,
it seemed hardly possible for one reared as she had been, to turn from her surroundings and lose herself in the deep spiritual meaning intended. Nay, when the line,