mall basket-phaeton, and two black ponies groomed within an inch of
their lives. My eyes fell on the ponies first, but I saw them no more
when the lady who drove them turned her face toward me.

She wore a close-fitting black velvet habit and a little round hat with
long black feather. Her hair might have been black velvet, too, as it
fell low on her forehead, and was fastened somehow behind in a heavy
coil. Black brows and lashes shaded clear gray eyes--the softest gray,
without the least tint of green in them--such eyes as Quaker maidens
ought to have under their gray bonnets. Little rose colored flushes kept
coming and going in her cheeks as she talked.

All at once I thought of Queen Guinevere,

As she fled fast thro' sun and shade,
With jingling bridle-reins.

"Mr. Rayne, do you see that lady in black, with the ponies?"

"Plainly."

"If I were a man, that woman would be my Fate."

"I thought women never admired each other's beauty."

"You are mistaken. Heretofore I have met beautiful women only in poetry.
Do you remember four lines about Queen Guinevere?--no, six lines, I
mean:

"She looked so lovely as she swayed
The rein with dainty finger-tips,
A man had given all other bliss,
And all his worldly worth for this,
To waste his whole heart in one kiss
Upon her perfect lips.

"I always thought them overstrained till now."

"I perfectly agree with you," said Mr. Rayne: "I knew we were congenial
spirits." Then he said a word or two in a diabolical language to his
groom, who ran to the carriage which I had been watching and repeated it
to the lady: she bowed and smiled to Mr. Rayne, and soon drew up her
ponies beside us.

"My wife," said Mr. Rayne with laughter in his eyes.

Mrs. Rayne talked much like other people, and her beauty ceased to
dazzle me after a few minutes; not that it grew less on near view, but,
being a woman, I could not fall in love with her in the nature of
things.

When the music stopped we drove to Mr. Rayne's house, his wife keeping
easily beside us. When she was occupied with the others Mr. Rayne
whispered, "Her praises were so sweet in my ears that I would not own
myself Sir Lancelot at once."

"If you are Sir Lancelot," I said, "where is King Arthur?"

"Forty fathoms deep, I hope," said Mr. Rayne with a sudden change in his
voice and a darkening face. I had raised a ghost for him without knowing
it, and he spoke no more till we reache