That was a little wrap of ermine.

Now ermine, as everybody knew, should only be worn by large and queenly women.

Mrs.Slade resolved that she herself would have an ermine wrap which should completely outshine Mrs.Edes' little affair, all swinging with tails and radiant with tiny, bright-eyed heads.
Mrs.Edes announced a duet by Miss MacDonald and Mrs.Wells, and sat down, and again the perfume of rose leaves was perceptible.

Karl von Rosen glanced at the next performers, Miss MacDonald, who was very pretty and well-dressed in white embroidered cloth, and Mrs.Wells, who was not pretty, but was considered very striking, who trailed after her in green folds edged with fur, and bore a roll of music.
She seated herself at the piano with a graceful sweep of her green draperies, which defined her small hips, and struck the keys with slender fingers quite destitute of rings, always lifting them high with a palpable affectation not exactly doubtful--that was saying too much--but she was considered to reach limits of propriety with her sinuous motions, the touch of her sensitive fingers upon piano keys, and the quick flash of her dark eyes in her really plain face.

There was, for the women in Fairbridge, a certain mischievous fascination about Mrs.Wells.Moreover, they had in her their one object of covert gossip, their one stimulus to unlawful imagination.
There was a young man who played the violin.