Never before had I beheld, and I doubt if I shall ever behold again, a
woman as lovely as the tall, graceful being upon whom our eyes rested at
that instant. In height quite five foot nine, as she stood there beneath
the glow of the electrolier in the luxurious hall, in her dinner dress,
the snowy slope of the shoulders and the deep, curved breast, strong,
yet all so softly, delicately rounded, gleamed like rosy alabaster in
the reflection from the red-shaded light above her.

Our eyes wandered from exquisite figure to exquisite face--and there was
no sense of disappointment. For the face was as nearly perfect as a
woman's may be upon this earth of imperfections. The uplift of the brow,
the curve of the cheek to the rounded chin, the noble sweep of delicate,
dark eyebrows were extraordinarily beautiful. Her hair was "a net for
the sunlight," its colour that of a new chestnut in the spring when the
sun shines hotly upon it, making it glow and shimmer and glisten with
red and yellow and deepest browns. Now it was drawn about her head in
shining twists, and across the front and rather low down on the brow was
a slim and delicate wreath of roses and foliage in very small diamonds
beautifully set in platinum. The gleam of the diamonds against the
red-brown of the wonderful hair was an effect impossible to
describe--yet one felt that the hair would have been the same miracle
without it.

"Mrs. Gastrell! Why, I didn't recognize your voice," I had heard Osborne
exclaim in a tone of amazement just after the light had been turned on.
but my attention had been so centred upon the Vision standing there
before us that I had hardly noticed the remark, or the emphasis with
which it was uttered. I suppose half a minute must have passed before
anybody spoke again, and then it was the woman who broke the silence.