What she relied on was the certainty that she knew her work, and that Madame's customers from the greatest to the least, from Mrs.Pletheridge to poor Miss Peterson, who bought only one good gown a year, admitted the thoroughness of her knowledge.

She had got on by learning all that there was to learn about the details of the work, and she stood now, secure and unassailable, on the foundation of her achievement.

In ten years she had fulfilled her resolution--she had made herself indispensable.

By patience, by hard work, by self-control, by ceaseless thought, and by innumerable sacrifices, she had made herself indispensable; and the result was that, as Madame weakened, she had grown steadily stronger.

Without her Dinard's would have dropped long ago to the position of a second-rate house, and she was aware that Madame understood this quite as clearly as she did.