It made you think of everything springing and singing and blooming and
sweet. Its expression was "blossomy, nightingale-y"; atilt with glee
and grace. And that was the way she looked and seemed. If you spoke to
her suddenly, the head turned as a bird's does, with a small, shy,
all-alive movement; and the bright eye glanced up at you, ready to
catch electric meanings from your own. When she talked to you in
return, she talked all over; with quiet, refined radiations of life
and pleasure in each involuntary turn and gesture; the blossom of her
face lifted and swayed like that of a flower delicately poised upon
its stalk. She was _like_ a flower chatting with a breeze.

She forgot altogether, as a present fact, that she looked pretty; but
she had known it once, when she dressed herself, and been glad of it;
and something lasted from the gladness just enough to keep out of her
head any painful, conscious question of how she _was_ seeming. That,
and her innate sense of things proper and refined, made her manners
what Mrs. Van Alstyne pronounced them,--"exquisite."

That was all Mrs. Van Alstyne waited to find out. She did not go deep;
hence she took quick fancies or dislikes, and a great many of them.

She got Rosamond over into a corner with herself, and they had
everybody round them. All the people in the room were saying how
lovely Miss Holabird looked to-night. For a little while that seemed a
great and beautiful thing. I don't know whether it was or not. It was
pleasant to have them find it out; but she would have been just as
lovely if they had not. Is a party so very particular a thing to be
lovely in? I wonder what makes the difference. She might have stood on
that same square of the Turkey carpet the next day and been just as