All that was the prosy part of shopping.

It was the poetry of it that Hilda loved,--the shimmer of silk and satin, the rich shadows in velvet, the cool, airy fluttering of lawn and muslin and lace.

So the girl went on her usual way, finding life a little dull, a little tiresome, and most people rather stupid, but everything on the whole much as usual, if her head only would not ache so; and it was without a shadow of suspicion that she obeyed one morning her mother's summons to come and see her in her dressing-room.
Mr.Graham always spoke of his wife's dressing-room as "the citadel." It was absolutely impregnable, he said.

In the open field of the drawing-room or the broken country of the dining-room it might be possible--he had never known such a thing to occur, but still it _might_ be possible--for the commander-in-chief to sustain a defeat; but once intrenched behind the walls of the citadel, horse, foot, and dragoons might storm and charge upon her, but they could not gain an inch.

Not an inch, sir! True it was that Mrs.Graham always felt strongest in this particular room.