s do not correspond, I fear," said I to myself, as I moved to
another part of the room. "But who is Miss Gardiner?"

In the next moment, I was introduced to the young lady whose name was
in my thought. The face into which I looked was of that fine oval which
always pleases the eye, even where the countenance itself does not
light up well with the changes of thought. But, in this case, a pair of
calm, deep, living eyes, and lips of shape most exquisitely delicate
and feminine--giving warrant of a beautiful soul--caused the face of
Miss Gardiner to hold the vision as by a spell. Low and very musical
was her voice, and there was a discrimination in her words, that lifted
whatever she said above the common-place, even though the subjects were
of the hour.

I do not remember how long it was after my introduction to Miss
Gardiner, before I discovered that her only ornament was a small,
exquisitely cut cameo breast-pin, set in a circlet of pearls. There was
no obtrusive glitter about this. It lay more like an emblem than a
jewel against her bosom. It never drew your attention from her face,
nor dimmed, by contrast, the radiance of her soul-lit eyes. I was
charmed, from the beginning, with this young lady. Her thoughts were
real gems, rich and rare, and when she spoke there was the flash of
diamonds in her sentences; not the flash of mere brilliant sayings,
like the gleaming of a polished sword, but of living truths, that lit
up with their own pure radiance every mind that received them.

Two or three times during the evening, Miss Harvey, radiant in her
diamonds--they cost twenty-two hundred dollars--the price would intrude
itself--and Miss Gardiner, almost guiltless of foreign ornament, were
thrown into immediate contact. But Miss Gardiner was not recognized by
the haughty wearer of gems. It was the old farce of pretence, seeking,
by borrowed attractions, to outshine the imperishable radiance of
truth. I looked on, and read the lesson her conduct gave, and wondered
that any were deceived into even a transient admiration. "Rich and rare
were the gems she wore," but they had in them no significance as
applied to the wearer. It was Miss Gardiner who had the real gems,
beautiful as charity, and pure as eternal truth; and she wore them with
a simple grace, that charmed every beholder who had eyes clear enough
from earthy dust and smoke to see them.

I never meet Miss Harvey, that I do not think of the pure and heavenly
things