while Malachi unwound the white worsted "nubia"
from her aristocratic throat. This done, she, too,
held a short consultation with the hall-mirror, carefully
dusting, with her tiny handkerchief, the little
pats of powder still left on her cheeks, and with her
jewelled fingers smoothing the soft hair parted over
her forehead, and tightening meanwhile the side-
combs that kept in place the clusters of short curls
which framed her face. Then, with head erect and a
gracious recognition of the old servant's ministrations,
she floated past Malachi, bent double in her
honor.

"Oh, I heard you, Nathan," she laughed, waving
her fan toward him as she entered the room. "I'm
not one minute late. Did you ever hear such impudence,
Sallie, and all because he reached your door
one minute before me," she added, stooping to kiss
Mrs. Horn. Punctuality was one of the cardinal
virtues of this most distinguished, prim, precise, and
most lovable of old maids. "You are really getting
to be dreadful, Mr. Nathan Gill, and so puffed up
--isn't he, Richard?" As she spoke she turned
abruptly and faced both gentlemen. Then, with one
of her rippling laughs--a laugh that Richard always
said reminded him of the notes of a bird--she caught
her skirts in her fingers, made the most sweeping of
courtesies and held out her hands to the two gentlemen
who were crossing the room to meet her.