appended to an animal of these incongruous attributes, and
Roderick, with his customary frankness, greeted the spectacle with a
confident smile. The young girl perceived it and turned her face full
upon him, with a gaze intended apparently to enforce greater deference.
It was not deference, however, her face provoked, but startled,
submissive admiration; Roderick's smile fell dead, and he sat eagerly
staring. A pair of extraordinary dark blue eyes, a mass of dusky hair
over a low forehead, a blooming oval of perfect purity, a flexible
lip, just touched with disdain, the step and carriage of a tired
princess--these were the general features of his vision. The young lady
was walking slowly and letting her long dress rustle over the gravel;
the young men had time to see her distinctly before she averted her
face and went her way. She left a vague, sweet perfume behind her as she
passed.

"Immortal powers!" cried Roderick, "what a vision! In the name of
transcendent perfection, who is she?" He sprang up and stood looking
after her until she rounded a turn in the avenue. "What a movement, what
a manner, what a poise of the head! I wonder if she would sit to me."

"You had better go and ask her," said Rowland, laughing. "She is
certainly most beautiful."

"Beautiful? She 's beauty itself--she 's a revelation. I don't believe
she is living--she 's a phantasm, a vapor, an illusion!"

"The poodle," said Rowland, "is certainly alive."

"Nay, he too may be a grotesque phantom, like the black dog in Faust."

"I hope at least that the young lady has nothing in common with
Mephistopheles. She looked dangerous."

"If beauty is immoral, as people think at Northampton," said Roderick,
"she is the incarnation of evil. The mamma and the queer old gentleman,
moreover, are a pledge of her reality. Who are they all?"

"The Prince and Princess Ludovisi and the principessina," suggested
Rowland.

"There are no such people," said Roderick. "Besides, the little old man
is not the papa." Rowland smiled, wondering how he had ascertained
these facts, and the young sculptor went on. "The old man is a Roman, a
hanger-on of the mamma, a useful personage who now and then gets asked
to dinner. The ladies are foreigners, from some Northern country; I
won't say which."

"Perhaps from the State of Maine," said Rowland.

"No, she 's not an American, I 'll lay a wager on that. She 's a
daughter of this elder world. We shall see her again, I pra