Her black hair showed no signs of turning gray, and her dark eyes were
bright and penetrating still. There were lines in her face, those
microscopic lines that come so abundantly to American women in middle age,
speaking of a certain restless nervousness that belongs to them
especially; but on the whole Mrs. Sam Wyndham was fair to see, having a
dignity of carriage and a grace of ease about her that at once gave the
impression of a woman thoroughly equal to the part she had to play in the
world, and not by any means incapable of enjoying it.

For the rest, Mrs. Sam led a life very much like the lives of many rich
Americans. She went abroad frequently, wandered about the continent with
her husband, went to Egypt and Algiers, stayed in England, where she had a
good many friends, avoided her countrymen and countrywomen when away from
home, and did her duty in the social state to which she was called in
Boston.

She read the books of the period, and generally pronounced them
ridiculous; she believed in her husband's politics, and aristocratically
approved the way in which he abstained from putting theory into practice,
from voting, and in a general way from dirtying his fingers with anything
so corrupt as government, or so despicable as elections; she understood
Boston business to some extent, and called it finance, but she despised
the New York Stock Market and denounced its doings as gambling. She made
fine distinctions, but she was a woman of sense, and was generally more
likely to be right than wrong when she had a definite opinion, or
expressed a definite dislike. Her religious views were simple and
unobtrusive, and never changed.

Her custom of being at home after five o'clock was perhaps the only
deviation she allowed herself from the established manners of her native