impalpable, but thus far impenetrable.

She had come to Fair Oaks some fifteen years previous to this time,
dressed in deep mourning, accompanied by her infant son, about three
years of age, and it was generally understood that she was distantly
related to Mr. Mainwaring. She was a strikingly handsome woman,
with that type of physical beauty which commands admiration, rather
than winning it; tall, with superb form and carriage, rich olive
skin, large dark eyes, brilliant as diamonds and as cold, but which
could become luminous with tenderness or fiery with passion, as
occasion required. To those whom she sought to entertain she could
be extremely charming, but to a few even of these, gifted with deeper
insight than the others, it seemed that beneath that fascinating
manner was a dangerous nature, a will that would brook no restraint,
that never would be thwarted; and that this was, in reality, the
power which dominated Fair Oaks.

After years of mysterious seclusion, however, the beautiful home of
Hugh Mainwaring, while maintaining its usual reserve towards its
neighbors, had thrown open its doors to guests from across the water;
and on the particular afternoon of the conference in the private
offices of Mainwaring & Co., there might have been seen on one of
the upper balconies of the mansion at Fair Oaks a group of five
English ladies, engaged in a discussion of their first impressions
regarding their host and his American home. The group consisted of
Mrs. Ralph Mainwaring and her daughter Isabel; Miss Edith Thornton,
the daughter of William Mainwaring Thornton and the fiancee of Hugh
Mainwaring, Jr.; Miss Winifred Carleton, a cousin of Miss Thornton;
and Mrs. Hogarth, the chaperone of the last named young ladies.