Chapter One.

The First Room.

“I take them for rheumatic gout,” said a slight, dark-haired woman to her neighbour, as she leant back in a low lounging-chair, and sipped some water an attendant had just brought her. “You would not suppose I suffered from such a complaint, would you?”—and she held up a small arched foot, with a scarcely perceptible swelling in the larger joint. She laughed somewhat affectedly, and the neighbour, who was fat and coarse, and had decided gouty symptoms herself, looked at her with something of the contempt an invalid elephant might be supposed to bestow on a buzzing fly.

“You made that remark the last time you were here,” she said; “and I told you, if you suffered from a suppressed form of the disease, it would be all the worse for you. Much better for it to come out—my doctor says.”

There was no doubt about the disease having “come out” in the person of the speaker. It had “come out” in her face, which was brilliantly rubicund; in her hands, and ankles and feet, which were a distressful spectacle of “knobs” and “bumps” of an exaggerated phrenological type—perhaps also in her temper, which was fierce and fiery as her complexion, as most of the frequenters of the Baths knew, and the attendants also, to their cost.

The small, dark lady, with the arched feet, lapsed into sulky silence, and let her eyes wander over the room to see if anyone she knew was there.

The Baths were of an extensive and sumptuous description—fitted up with almost oriental luxury and comfort, and attached to a monster hotel, built by an enterprising Company of speculators, at an English winter resort, in Hampshire.

The Company had proudly hoped that lavish expenditure, a beautiful situation, and the disinterested recommendation of fashionable physicians, would induce English people to discover that there were spots and places in their own land as healthy and convenient as Auvergne, or Wiesbaden, or the Riviera. But though the coast views were fine, and the scenery picturesque, and the monster hotel itself stood on a commanding eminence, surrounded by darkly-beautiful pine woods, and was fitted up with every luxury of modern civilisation, including every specimen of Bath that human ingenuity had devised, the Company looked blankly at the returns on their balance-sheet, and one or two Directors murmured audible complaints at special Board meetings, against the fashionable physicians who had not acted up to their promises, or proved deserving of the substantial bonus which had been more than hinted at, as a reward for recommended patients.

On this December morning, some half-dozen ladies, of various ages and stability of person, and all suffering, in a greater or less degree, from various fashionable complaints—such as neuralgia, indigestion, rheumatism, or its aristocratic cousin, rheumatic-gout—were in Room Number One of the Turkish Bath.

The female form is generally supposed to be “divine,” and poets and painters have, from time immemorial, rhapsodised over “beauty unadorned.” It is probable that such poets and painters have never been gratified by such a vision of feminine charms as Room Number One presented.

Light and airy garments were, certainly, to be seen, but not—forms. It was, of course, a question of taste, as to whether the fat women, or the thin women, looked the worst—probably the former, if one might judge by the two samples of the lady who had arched feet, and the lady who had not.

Both were staying at the hotel, and were respectively named—Mrs Masterman, and Mrs Ray Jefferson. Mrs Masterman was a widow. Mrs Ray Jefferson had a husband. He was an American, blessed with many dollars, amassed on the strength of an “Invention.” When Mr Jefferson spoke of the Invention, people usually supposed it to be of a mechanical nature. As they became more familiar with him, they learnt that it was something “Chemical.” No one quite knew what, but it became associated in their minds with “vats” and “boilers,” and large works somewhere “down Boston way.” There could be no doubt of the excellence of the Invention, because Mr Ray Jefferson said it was known, and used all over Europe, and its success was backed by dollars to an apparently unlimited extent. The Inventor and his wife had sumptuous rooms, but they were not averse to mixing with their “fellow-man,” or rather “woman,”—for Mrs Jefferson rejoiced in the possession of certain Parisian toilettes, and was not selfish enough to keep them only for the eyes of her lord and master.

She was grudgingly but universally acknowledged to be the best-dressed woman in the hotel—except, of course, when she was in the Turkish Baths, which unfortunately reduced its frequenters to one level of apparelling, a garment which made up in simplicity for any lack of elegance.

The shape was always the same—viz., short in the skirt, low in the neck, and bare as to sleeves. The material was generally pink cotton, or white with a red border.

Mrs Jefferson was quite American enough to have “notions” on dress, more or less original and extravagant. Finding her companion was unusually silent this morning, she gave up her thoughts to the devising of a special toilet for the Bath.

These garments were so hideous, she told herself, that it was no wonder people looked such guys in them. Still there was no reason why she should not have something chic and novel for herself—something which should arouse the envy of, and make the wearer appear quite different to, the other women.

The choice of style was easy enough—something Grecian and artistic—but the material discomposed her. It was hardly possible to have a bath of this description without one’s garment getting into a moist and clinging condition—leaving alone the after processes of shampooing, douche, and plunge. So silk, or satin, or woollen material was out of the question, and cotton was common, not to say vulgar.

She knitted her brows with a vigour demanded by so absorbing a subject: the white head-cloth fell off, and she felt that her fringe was all out of curl and lay straight on her forehead in most unbecoming fashion. That also would have to be considered in the question of costume—a head-dress which should combine use and ornament. The idea of having only a wet, white rag on one’s head! No wonder people looked “objects!” Perhaps it would be better to coil the hair about the brow and have no fringe, or at least only a few loose locks that would look equally well, straight or curled.

As Mrs Ray Jefferson was taking all this trouble about her personal appearance, when that appearance would only gratify the sight of a few members of her own sex who were generally too much taken up with their own ailments or complaints to care what their fellow-sufferers looked like, it shows the fallacy of a popular superstition that women only care to dress for men. Believe me, no—they dress for critics, the critics of their own sex, who with one contemptuous glance can sweep a toilette into insignificance, and make its wearer miserable, or, by some envious approbation, are reluctantly compelled to bestow on it the seal of success.

Is it for men, think you, that those delicate nuances and tints and shades are harmonised and put together? Such a conceit is only pardonable in a set of beings who possess not the delicate faculty of “detail,” and who, with a limited knowledge of even cardinal colours, describe the graces and beauties of a toilette by saying the wearer had on something white, or something black, or something red, but “it suited her down to the ground.” A few misguided individuals have even been known to take refuge in the