And now that she did have the opportunity, she found she was strangely reluctant to say anything. Verity was wearing the burgundy silk gown. She knew it became her better than anything she had ever worn before. She had made burgundy silk roses to ornament her hair. If she told Charlotte about the meeting, then Charlotte would ply her with questions and exclaim and criticize and might even send her home! But when they left their wraps in a downstairs room in the Whitakers’ mansion that had been assigned to the female guests and Verity saw the full glory of Charlotte’s ensemble, she began to feel very silly. Who in their right mind was going to notice a provincial girl in a homemade gown when faced with such magnificence? Charlotte was wearing a gown of silver spider gauze over a white slip. On her golden curls was a cunning headdress of silver gauze embroidered with silver thread and seed pearls. The gown was cut very low to show the whiteness of Charlotte’s skin and the excellence of her bust.
