costliness, and at length had herself dressed quite simply in black velvet, only relieved by all her diamonds.
"He said fair women should always wear black," she thought: it was not her Magister of Paris of whom she was thinking as the sayer of that wise phrase. And then again she was angry with herself for remembering such a thing, and attiring herself in obedience to it, and would have had herself undrest again only there was but one small quarter of an hour in which to reach the Roubleskoff villa; a palace of the fairies four miles from the south-gate. So she went as she was; casting a dubious impatient glance behind her at the mirrors.
"I look well," she thought with a smile, and her content returned.
She knew that he would be present at the dinner. There is no escaping destiny in Floralia: people meet too often.
The dinner disappointed her.
She thought it very long and very stupid. She sat between the Grand Duke of Rittersbähn and the Envoy of all the Russias, and Della
