character;
pallid faces caught a reflection of rose tints; too ruddy complexions
were toned down by paling colors, and sallow skins found their ochre hue
mysteriously neutralized. Angular shapes were draped so gracefully that
unsymmetrical sharpness disappeared; too ample forms exchanged their air
of uncouth corpulence for a well-defined roundness; low statures seemed
to spring up to a nobler altitude, and women of masculine height sunk
into feminine proportions. In short, Mademoiselle Melanie was not a
mantua-maker, or milliner,--she was the genius of taste, the artful
embodier of poetry in outward adorning.

Her own person was strikingly attractive; but the severest simplicity
characterized her attire. Her manners, though affable, were exceedingly
reserved; without any apparent effort, she repressed the familiarity of
the vulgar, and rebuked the patronizing airs of the assuming, winning
instinctive deference even from the ill-bred.

By her workwomen she was almost worshipped. Young herself, she impressed
them with the sense that notwithstanding her lack of advantage over them
in point of years, her superior skill and knowledge entitled her to be
their head. She sympathized with their griefs, inquired into their
needs, sometimes ignored their short-comings, but never their
sufferings, and took care that the thread which helped fashion a lady's
robe should not be drawn with such weary and overworked hands that, in
the language of Hood, it sewed a shroud at the same moment.

She was seldom seen in the streets; and, when her duties called her, she
went forth closely veiled. But her distinguished air, the simple
elegance of her apparel, and the dignified grace of her movements could
not escape admiration.

She soon found a carriage of her own indispensable, and selected an
unostentatious equipage; but allowed herself the indulgence of a pair of
superb horses, because she chanced to be an appreciating judge of those
noble animals: a rather unusual knowledge for a _couturiere_.

She seldom walked or drove alone. She was usually accompanied by one of
her assistants, a young Massachusetts girl, with whom she had been
thrown into accidental communication shortly after her arrival in the
United States.

The history of Ruth Thornton is one every day repeated, but not less
touching because so far from rare. Born and bred in affluence which
emanated from the daily exertions of her father, his death left his
widow and three o