rously.

"Gerald? Pray, who is Gerald?" inquired Mrs. Whittridge.

Her brother lifted his hands in mock amazement. "Is it possible you know
Miss Phebe so long and need ask who Gerald is? I will tell you. Gerald is
perfection individualized. Gerald has all the qualities, mental,
physical, and spiritual, that it is possible to compress into the limited
compass of even an overgrown human frame. Gerald, you must know, is
intellectual to a degree, beautiful as an archangel, adorable as--as you,
Soeur Angelique, and clever--almost--as myself."

Phebe clapped her hands and nodded, "Yes, yes, all that!"

"I can tell you all about Gerald," continued Halloway. "I have heard of
nothing else since I came. Gerald, my dear sister, is Miss Phebe's idol;
I rather think she says her prayers before Gerald's picture every night."

"Oh, please!" cried Phebe.

"But who is this Gerald?" asked Mrs. Whittridge. "Does he live here?"

"No, Soeur Angelique, and by the way he is not he at all, but she, and
will be known in history as Miss Geraldine Vernor. She lives in New York,
rolls in wealth, and is one of a large family of whom she is the
sun-flower. Let me give you her portrait as I have it from fragmentary
but copious descriptions. She is, I should say, five feet eleven and
three quarter inches in height--don't shake your head, Miss Phebe,--and
slender in disproportion. She has the feet of a Chinese, the hands of a
baby, and the strength of a Jupiter Ammon. She has hair six yards long
and blacker than Egyptian darkness. She has a forehead so low it rests
upon her eyebrows, which, by the way, have been ruled straight across
the immeasurable breadth of it with a T square. She has eyes bluer one
minute than the grotto at Capri, greener the next than grass in June,
grayer the next than a November day, and so on in turn through all the
prismatic colors. Her eyelashes are only not quite so long as her hair.
She has a mouth which would strike you as large,--it is five and a half
inches across,--but when she speaks, and you hear the combined wisdom of
Solomon, and Plato, and Socrates, and Solon, and the rest of the ancients
(not to mention the moderns), falling from her lips, your only wonder is
that her mouth keeps within its present limits. Her nose--Miss Phebe, can
it be? Is it possible you have left out her nose? Soeur Angelique, I am
forced to the melancholy conclusion that Gerald has none. Miss Phebe
would never have omitted mentioning i