my cousin Kate.

Born into the world with many other gifts, this last and least
definable gift of popularity was added to complete them all.
Nobody criticised her, nobody was jealous of her, her very
rivals lent her their new music and their lovers; and her own
discarded wooers always sought her to be a bridesmaid when they
married somebody else.

She was one of those persons who seem to have come into the
world well-dressed. There was an atmosphere of elegance around
her, like a costume; every attitude implied a presence-chamber
or a ball-room. The girls complained that in private
theatricals no combination of disguises could reduce Kate to
the ranks, nor give her the "make-up" of a waiting-maid. Yet as
her father was a New York merchant of the precarious or
spasmodic description, she had been used from childhood to the
wildest fluctuations of wardrobe;--a year of Paris
dresses,--then another year spent in making over ancient
finery, that never looked like either finery or antiquity when
it came from her magic hands. Without a particle of vanity or
fear, secure in health and good-nature and invariable
prettiness, she cared little whether the appointed means of
grace were ancient silk or modern muslin. In her periods of
poverty, she made no secret of the necessary devices; the other
girls, of course, guessed them, but her lovers never did,
because she always told them. There was one particular tarlatan
dress of hers which was a sort of local institution. It was
known to all her companions, like the State House. There was a
report that she had first worn it at her christening; the