Miss Montgomerie met him with the calmness of an absolute
stranger; and when, with the recollection of the
indescribable look she had bestowed upon him glowing at
his heart, Gerald again sought in her eyes some trace of
the expression that had stirred every vein into transport,
he found there indifference the most complete. How great
his mortification was we will not venture to describe,
but the arch and occasional raillery of his lively cousin,
Julia D'Egville, seemed to denote most plainly that the
conqueror and the conquered had exchanged positions.

Nor was this surprising; Miss Montgomerie's travelling
habit had been discarded for the more decorative ornaments
of a dinner toilet, in which, however, the most marked
simplicity was preserved. A plain white muslin dress gave
full developement to a person, which was of a perfection
that no dress could have disguised. It was the bust of
a Venus, united to a form, to create which would have
taxed the imaginative powers of a Praxiteles--a form so
faultlessly moulded that every movement presented some
new and unpremeditated grace. What added to the surpassing
richness of her beauty was her hair, which, black, glossy,
and of eastern luxuriance, and seemingly disdaining the
girlishness of curls, reposed in broad Grecian bands,
across a brow, the intellectual expression of which they
contributed to form. Yet, never did woman exhibit in her
person and face, more opposite extremes of beauty. If
the one was strikingly characteristic of warmth, the
other was no less indicative of coldness. Fair, even to
paleness, were her cheek and forehead, which wore an