ternate tenderness and brilliancy as they were veiled
or uncovered by the long lashes. They were gently commanding eyes, and
no doubt her most effective point. Her abundant hair, brown with a touch
of red in it in some lights, fell over her broad forehead in the fashion
of the time. She had a way of carrying her head, of throwing it back at
times, that was not exactly imperious, and conveyed the impression
of spirit rather than of mere vivacity. These details seem to me all
inadequate and misleading, for the attraction of the face that made
it interesting is still undefined. I hesitate to say that there was a
dimple near the corner of her mouth that revealed itself when she smiled
lest this shall seem mere prettiness, but it may have been the keynote
of her face. I only knew there was something about it that won the
heart, as a too conscious or assertive beauty never does. She may have
been plain, and I may have seen the loveliness of her nature, which I
knew well, in features that gave less sign of it to strangers. Yet I
noticed that Mr. Lyon gave her a quick second glance, and his manner was
instantly that of deference, or at least attention, which he had shown
to no other lady in the room. And the whimsical idea came into my
mind--we are all so warped by international possibilities--to observe
whether she did not walk like a countess (that is, as a countess ought
to walk) as she advanced to shake hands with my wife. It is so easy to
turn life into a comedy!

Margaret's great-grandmother--no, it was her great-great-grandmother,
but we have kept the Revolutionary period so warm lately that it seems
near--was a Newport belle, who married an officer in the suite of
Rochambeau what time the French defenders of liberty conquered the women
of Rhode Island. After the war was over, our officer resigned his love
of glory for the heart of one of the loveliest women and the care of the
best plantation on the Island. I have seen a miniature of her, which
her lover wore at Yorktown, and which he always swore that Washington
coveted--a miniature painted by a wandering artist of the day, which
entirely justifies the French officer in his abandonment of the trade of
a soldier. Such is man in his best estate. A charming face can make him
campaign and fight and slay like a demon, can make a coward of him,
can fill him with ambition to win the world, and can tame him into the
domesticity of a drawing-room cat. There is this noble capacit