sincerely tried to be. But her simple gowns and her plainly massed
hair only served to emphasize the extraordinary distinction of her
appearance, and her utmost effort to obliterate herself could not
quite keep her from notice. Men raised their eyebrows, with a
significant puckering of the lips, when she slipped quietly
through the halls; and women narrowed their eyes, and looked
questioningly at one another. Isabelle, who was far too securely
throned to be jealous of any one, sometimes told her that she
would make a fortune on the stage, but old Mrs. Carter, who for
reasons perfectly comprehensible in an old lady who had once been
handsome herself, detested Harriet, and said to her daughter-in-
law that in her opinion there was something queer about the girl.

There was nothing queer in her aspect to-day, at all events, as
she demurely performed her duties at the tea table. To the
occasional pleasant and surprised "Hello, Miss Field!" she
returned a composed and unsmiling nod of greeting; for the rest,
she poured and sweetened, and conferred with the maids, in a
manner entirely businesslike.

She was of that always-arresting type that combines a warm dusky
skin with blue eyes and fair hair. The eyes, in her case, were a
soft smoky blue, set in thick and inky black lashes, and the hair
was brassy gold, banded carelessly but trimly about her rather
broad forehead. Her mouth was wide, deep crimson, thin-lipped; it
had humorous possibilities all its own, and Nina and Ward thought
her never so fascinating as when she developed them; it was a
mouth of secrets and of mystery, of character, a mouth that had
known the trembling of pain and grief, perhaps, but a firm mouth
now, and a beautiful one.