"If she wasn't so sallow, she'd be really good looking." Happily unaware that her face had betrayed her, Gabriella slid back a glass door, took a hat out of the case, and answered indifferently, while she adjusted the ribbon bow on one side of the crown: "I didn't know Mr.Fowler had come back.

I haven't seen him for ages." From her small, smooth head to her slender feet she had acquired in three months the composed efficiency of Miss Lancaster; and one might have imagined, as Mrs.Spencer remarked to Florrie afterwards, that "she had been born in a hat shop." But instead of the weary patience of Miss Lancaster, she brought to her work the brimming energy and the joyous self-confidence of youth.

It was impossible to watch her and not realize that she had given both ability and the finer gift of personality to the selling of hats.

Had she started life as a funeral director instead of a milliner, it is probable that she would have infused into the dreary business something of the living quality of genius.
"Oh, Florrie hadn't seen him for ages either," chirped Mrs.Spencer, with her restless eyes on the hat in Gabriella's hand.

"I don't know whether I ought to tell you or not, but you and Florrie are so intimate I suppose I might as well--Julia Caperton told Florrie that George came back because he heard in some way that you had broken your engagement to Arthur.