She was a slender woman, of medium height, with a small, well-poised head,
on which the hair lay smooth and glossy. Her age was somewhere between
thirty and thirty-five years. A stranger would have been first of all
impressed by the imperious carriage of her head and shoulders, the repose
of her attitude. Become a friend or a longer acquaintance, he would have
noticed more particularly her wide low brow, her steady gray eyes and her
grave but humorous lips. But inevitably he would have gone back at last to
her more general impression. Ben Sansome, the only man in town who did
nothing, made society and dress a profession and the judgment of women a
religion, had long since summed her up: "She carries her head charmingly."

This poised, wise serenity of carriage was well set off by the costume of
the early fifties--a low collar, above which her neck rose like a flower
stem; flowing sleeves; full skirts with many silken petticoats that
whispered and rustled; low sandalled shoes, their ties crossed and
recrossed around white slender ankles. A cameo locket, hung on a heavy gold
chain, rose and fell with her breast; a cameo brooch pinned together the
folds of her bodice; massive and wide bracelets of gold clasped her wrists
and vastly set off her rounded, slender forearms.

She stood quite motionless in the doorway, nodding with a little smile in
response to the men's sweeping salutes.

"You will excuse me gentlemen, I am sure," said Sherwood formally, and
instantly turned aside.

The woman in the doorway thereupon preceded him down a narrow, bare,
unlighted hallway, opened another door, and entered a room. Sherwood