diamond merchants and jewelers.

She was exquisitely dressed in an expensive, tailor-made costume of gray
ladies' cloth, with a gray felt bonnet trimmed with the same shade of
velvet as her dress. Her hands were faultlessly gloved, her feet incased
in costly imported boots, and everything about her apparel bespoke her a
favorite of wealth and luxury.

Her appearance was the more marked from the fact that her hair was a
deep, rich red, and curled about her fair forehead in lovely natural
curls, while she wore over her face a spotted black lace veil, which,
however, did not quite conceal some suspicious wrinkles and
"crow's-feet," if that had been her object in wearing it.

She had driven to the store in a plain but elegant _coupé_, drawn by a
pair of black horses in gold-mounted harness. Her driver was apparently a
man of about thirty years, and of eminently respectable appearance in his
dark-green livery.

She approached a counter on entering the store, and, in a charmingly
affable manner, asked to look at some diamonds.

As it happened, at that hour, one of the clerks was absent, and Mr. Amos
Palmer was himself in attendance in his place, and politely served the
lady, laying out before her a glittering array of the costly stones she
desired to examine.

He saw at once that she was a judge of the gems, for she selected not the
largest and most showy, but the purest and the best, and he could but
admire her discernment and taste.