"THAT is a new appearance."

"Who can she be?"

"Unique--is she not?" were queries bandied from one to another of
the various parties of guests scattered through the extensive
parlors of the most fashionable of Washington hotels, at the
entrance of a company of five or six late arrivals. All the persons
composing it were well dressed, and had the carriage of people of
means and breeding. Beyond this there was nothing noteworthy about
any of them, excepting the youngest of the three ladies of what
seemed to be a family group. When they stopped for consultation upon
their plans for this, their first evening in the capital, directly
beneath the central chandelier of the largest drawing-room, she
stood, unintentionally, perhaps, upon the outside of the little
circle, and not exerting herself to feign interest in the parley,
sought amusement in a keen, but polite survey of the assembly,
apparently in no wise disconcerted at the volley of glances she
encountered in return.

If she were always in the same looks she wore just now, she must
have been pretty well inured to batteries of admiration by this date
in her sunny life. She was below the medium of woman's stature,
round and pliant in form and limbs; in complexion dark as a gypsy
but with a clear skin that let the rise and fall of the blood
beneath be marked as distinctly as in that of the fairest blonde.
Her eyes were brown or black, it was hard to say which, so changeful
were their lights and shades; and her other features, however