were rather insipid, being too small and fine; but they were redeemed
by the liquid splendor of her beautiful eyes, and the mortal pallor
of her complexion. She was altogether so startling an apparition, that
all of us jaded, commonplace spectres turned and fastened our weary,
lack-lustre eyes upon her looks, with an utter inability to remove them.
There was one fat, unctuous person seated opposite, to whom his interest
was a torture, for he would have gone to sleep except for her remarkable
presence: as it was, his heavy eyelids fell half-way shut, and drooped
there at an agonizing angle, while his eyes remained immovably fixed upon
that strange, death-white face. How it could have come of that
colorlessness,--whether through long sickness or long residence in a
tropical climate,--was a question that perplexed another of the
passengers, who would have expected to hear the lady speak any language in
the world rather than English; and to whom her companion or attendant was
hardly less than herself a mystery,--being a dragon-like, elderish female,
clearly a Yankee by birth, but apparently of many years' absence from
home. The propriety of extracting these people from the horse-cars and
transferring them bodily to the first chapter of a romance was a thing
about which there could be no manner of doubt, and nothing prevented the
abduction but the unexpected voluntary exit of the pale lady. As she
passed out everybody else awoke as from a dream, or as if freed from a
potent fascination. It is part of the mystery that this lady should never
have reappeared in that theatre of life, the horse-car; but I cannot
regret having never seen her more; she was so inestimably precious to
wonder that it would have been a kind of loss to learn anything about her.

[Illustration: "The young lady in black, who alighted at a most ordinary
little street."]

On the other hand, I should be glad if two young men who once presented