t give me her name nor yet her business; she is settin' in
the drawin'-room, and says she will wait till you are quite at leisure.
I was about to tell her," he added with still deeper solemnity, "that
you were hout, sir, but she hinterrupted of me and said, 'He isn't
gone, there's his 'at,' which I told her you 'ad several 'ats, and
would she wait in the drawin'-room and I'd see."

Captain Farnham smiled.

"Very well, Budsey, you've done your best--and perhaps she won't eat me
after all. Is there a fire in the drawing-room?"

"No, sir."

"Let her come in here, then."

A moment afterward the rustle of a feminine step made Farnham raise his
head suddenly from his paper. It was a quick, elastic step, accompanied
by that crisp rattle of drapery which the close clinging garments of
ladies produced at that season. The door opened, and as the visitor
entered Farnham rose in surprise. He had expected to see the usual
semi-mendicant, with sad-colored raiment and doleful whine, calling for
a subscription for a new "Centennial History," or the confessed genteel
beggar whose rent would be due to-morrow. But there was nothing in any
way usual in the young person who stood before him. She was a tall and
robust girl of eighteen or nineteen, of a singularly fresh and vigorous
beauty. The artists forbid us to look for physical perfection in real
people, but it would have been hard for the coolest-headed studio-rat
to find any fault in the slender but powerful form of this young woman.
Her color was deficient in delicacy, and her dark hair was too
luxuriant to be amenable to the imperfect discipline to which it had
been accustomed; but the eye of Andrea, sharpened by criticising
Raphael, could hardly have found a line to alter in her. The dress of
that year was scarcely more reticent in its revelations than the first
wet cloth with which a sculptor swathes his kneaded clay; and pretty
women walked in it with almost the same calm consciousness of power
which Phryne displayed before her judges. The girl who now entered
Farnham's library had thrown her shawl over one arm, because the shawl
was neither especially ornamental nor new, and she could not afford to
let it conceal her dress of which she was innocently proud; for it
represented not only her beautiful figure with few reserves, but also
her skill and taste and labor. She had cut the pattern out of an
illustrated newspaper, had fashioned and sewed it with her own hands;
she knew