Like the gate, the front door stood wide open and Joseph waited on the steps, beaming from ear to ear. Ignoring his formal bow, she threw her arms around him and hugged him, and felt a pang at the frailty of the body she clasped. She knew she was the darling of the household and accepted the fact with humility; it was not her own graces that endeared her, but the fact that she and her sister were as close to grandchildren as Mrs. MacDougal would ever have. Pat was an only child, and he had married late in life.

She suspected that Joseph was as shocked by the change in her as she was by his aging, but he was far too well-bred to let his feelings show. He bowed her into the house and helped her off with her coat, tsk-tsking over how wet she was. "You should not have walked in such weather, Miss Karen. Had Mrs. Mac informed me earlier of your coming, I would have sent the car around."

"Sent?" Karen repeated, with an affectionate smile. "I thought you refused to let anyone else drive for Mrs. Mac."

A shadow of vexation crossed Joseph's dark, patrician features. "I regret to inform you, Miss Karen, that the absurd laws of this municipality have forbidden me that activity. However, there is a young person-"

Before he could go on, a parrotlike shriek proclaimed the arrival of Mrs. MacDougal. She wore one of the fantastic garments for which she had long been famous in Washington society. Karen was accustomed to her hostess's eccentricities in dress-Mrs. MacDougal had once received her in a Cossack uniform, complete with slung pelisse and furry hat-but this ensemble reached new heights of bizarreness. It appeared to be a wedding gown of ivory satin, the low-cut bodice encrusted with pearls and brilliants, the skirt overlaid with panels of lace. The effect was marred not only by Mrs. MacDougal's face- which, as her son had once remarked, resembled that of one of the handsomer Egyptian mummies-but by the patter of pearls falling from the bodice and the fact that the dress had been made for a taller, more full-bodied woman.

As Mrs. MacDougal clasped Karen in an affectionate embrace, a perfect hail of pearls splattered onto the floor. Karen gave a cry of distress. "Your beautiful gown!"

Mrs. MacDougal grinned broadly. "My wedding dress. Never think it, would you? I seem to have shrunk. Did you ever read She?"

"No," Karen said, bewildered.

"Immortal woman," Mrs. Mac explained. "Bathed in the fire of Life-two thousand years old-superbly beautiful. Went back into the fire, reversed the process- aged two thousand years in five minutes. Nasty. Felt like that myself when I tried on this dress."

"You look wonderful."

Mrs. MacDougal guffawed. "Age cannot wither nor custom stale my magnificent variety. Or something like that. Let me get out of this antique before it collapses completely. I just put it on to give you a sample of my wares."

She yanked at the dress, and a shower of tiny satin-covered buttons joined the pearls littering the floor. Karen caught at the crumpling folds with careful hands, and Mrs. MacDougal stepped out of the dress. Under it she wore purple jogging pants and a sleeveless, low-cut T-shirt emblazoned in multicolored sequins with a motto so extremely vulgar that Karen's eyes literally popped. Joseph was well accustomed to his mistress's habits; he took the wedding dress from Karen's palsied grasp, and as Mrs. MacDougal escorted her out of the room she saw him advancing on the scattered ornaments with a whisk broom and dustpan, his countenance bland as cream.

Mrs. MacDougal led Karen along a corridor. "Decided to close most of the house last year," she explained. "Too much for Joseph and the others. Moved my bedroom downstairs. Easier for everybody."

The room they entered had been one of the small parlors. It had French doors opening onto a terrace and the famous Japanese garden. Mist blurred the outlines of the bridge and the pagoda and turned the miniature waterfall into a swaying phantom form, but the room was bright and cheerful with its red satin draperies and rose-spattered wallpaper and every light blazing. A small table was set for breakfast. Every other piece of furniture in the room, including the grand piano, was strewn with clothing.

"Show and tell," shouted Mrs. MacDougal, as Karen stared. "Got it out this morning. Lots more where that came from."

The collection resembled Ruth's only in the variety of styles represented, from the beautiful hand-worked lingerie of the Edwardian period to the notorious silver caftan and turban Mrs. MacDougal had worn on her first meeting with her future daughter-in-law. Ruth still hadn't gotten over the shock of that caftan; she talked about it to this day.

But these were no designer copies-they were the originals. One glance would have made that plain to any woman with the slightest sense of fashion. Karen touched a flapper dance dress whose crystal beads shimmered like fragments of ice, and bent over to read the label. "Balenciaga," she said.

Mrs. MacDougal nodded. "There are a couple of Worths around somewhere. He made my trousseau. I gave some things to the cleaning woman-"

Karen let out an involuntary but heartfelt groan. "You gave Worth gowns to the cleaning woman? But he was-he designed for all the royal houses of Europe and England."

"There's still a lot left. I was quite a clotheshorse in my day." Mrs. Mac indicated a white net dress over-embroidered and banded with lace. "I had dozens of those-proper wear for innocent young maidens back then. And this…" She lifted a coat of gold-and-silver brocade whose collar and wide sleeves dripped sable. "I wore this to The Girl from Utah at the Knickerbocker Theater in 1914." She began to croon in a loud tuneless voice. "La-da-de-da-dah, da-da-da-da-"

"Jerome Kern?" Karen said, grinning.

"Right. See, you have a feeling for the antique. What's the term-vintage?"

"These aren't vintage, these are classics-museum pieces." Karen spread her hands in a gesture of denial and appreciation. "I can't accept-"

"Who said I was giving them to you?" Mrs. MacDougal's deep-set black eyes sparkled wickedly. "The markup is about two hundred percent, isn't it? I'll collect my third, never fear."

Karen laughed helplessly. "You're impossible."

"Thank you. Let's eat, shall we? I'm starved." She lifted a silver cover and steam rose from a yellow foam of scrambled eggs framed by sausages.

"I certainly don't need to eat," Karen said. "I'm overweight."

"I'll bet you've started to lose it. Your appetite isn't too hot these days, is it? A little queasy all the time? I had a friend," said Mrs. MacDougal reminiscently, "who lived for a year after her divorce on gin, smoked oysters, and artichoke hearts."

"You're making that up."

"Child, I don't have to make up bizarre stories. People do stranger things than any writer can invent, and after ninety-odd years I've seen it all. She lost twenty pounds," Mrs. MacDougal added. "Not that I recommend her method, mind you. Have a sausage. After breakfast we'll go around and look at the shop I have in mind."

"Mrs. Mac, it's out of the question for me to open in Georgetown. Rents and taxes are sky-high. I'll have to look around in the suburbs-Gaithersburg, Rockville, Falls Church. That's what Julie did; she only moved to Georgetown a few years ago, and I think she's regretting it."

"I agree," Mrs. MacDougal said calmly.

"You do? But you said-"

"Oh, I just threw that out to see whether you had forgotten to use your brains. I'm glad to find that you haven't. What are your plans?"

Karen wasn't aware that she had made any plans. However, prompted by encouraging grunts and nods of approval, she heard herself glibly propounding schemes that must have developed while she slept; she certainly hadn't consciously considered them during her waking moments. Trips to museums to study costume and find materials on textile treatment and preservation, weekend visits to outlying towns looking for a suitable location and checking out future sources such as local auctions and yard sales… By the time she finished breakfast she realized she had a campaign mapped out, at least in broad outline, and she looked incredulously at Mrs. MacDougal, who was licking her fingers after eating six sausages.