With rapid fingers I unbutton my blue-velvet gown, and step out of it, leaving it in a costly heap on the floor.

Then I open the high folding-doors of the wardrobe, and run my eye over its contents; but the most becoming is no longer what I seek.

For a moment or two I stand undecided, then my eye is caught by a venerable garment, loathly and ill-made, which I had before I married, and have since kept, more as a relic than any thing else--a gown of that peculiar shade of sallow, bilious, Bismarck brown, which is the most trying to the paleness of my skin.

Before any one could say "Jack Robinson," it is down, and I am in it.

Then, without even a parting smooth to the hair, which the violent off-tearing of my cap must have roughened and disheveled, I go down-stairs and reenter the boudoir.