It is a bright, sunny day--as sunny, at least, as a London day ever
can make up its mind to be--and as the yellow, slanting rays pour in
through the muslin curtains full on face and figure, you may search
and find no flaw in either. It is a very lovely face, a very graceful,
though petite figure. She is a blonde of the blondest type: her hair
is like spun gold, and, wonderful to relate, no Yellow Wash: no Golden
Fluid, has ever touched its shining abundance. Her eyes are bluer than
the September sky over the Russell Square chimney-pots; her nose is
neither aquiline nor Grecian, but it is very nice; her forehead is low,
her mouth and chin "morsels for the gods." The little figure is
deliciously rounded and ripe; in twenty years from now she may be a
heavy British matron, with a yard and a half wide waist--at eighteen
years old she is, in one word, perfection.

Her dress is perfection also. She wears a white India muslin, a marvel
of delicate embroidery and exquisite texture, and a great deal of
Valenciennes trimming. She has a pearl and turquoise star fastening
her lace collar, pearl and turquoise drops in her ears, and a half
dozen diamond rings on her plump, boneless fingers. A blue ribbon
knots up the loose yellow hair, and you may search the big city from
end to end, and find nothing fairer, fresher, sweeter than Ethel, Lady
Catheron.

If ever a gentleman and a baronet had a fair and sufficient excuse for
the folly of a low marriage, surely Sir Victor Catheron has it in this
fairy wife--for it is a "low marriage" of the most heinous type. Just
seventeen months ago, sauntering idly along the summer sands, looking
listlessly at the summer sea, thinking drearily that this time next
year his freedom would be over, and his Cousin Inez his lawful owner
and possessor, his eyes had fallen on that lovely blonde face--that