voice,
and with what seemed to me a foreign accent; but then I had never heard
the Southern accent, which is full of music, and seems somehow to avoid
the sibilant tone as well as the nasal drawl characteristic of Northern
tongues.

I was attracted to her, not by her beauty, though that was marked, but
by her cordial, unaffected manner of placing her two hands in ours, and
by her infantine sweetness of expression. Whatever she might have gone
through, I saw she had not suffered. There was no line or track of
experience, on her broad, tranquil brow, nor was there the hushed,
restrained expression left in all eyes that have deeply mourned and
bitterly wept. The look was serene and youthful, with such happiness as
might come from health and elemental life,--such as a Dryad might have
in her songful bowers, or a Naiad plunging in the surf. But it was a
shallow face, and pleased only as the sunshine does. For my part, I
would rather listen to the sorrowful song of the pine-tree: that is the
tune of life.

So, after the first five minutes, the face of Mrs. Lewis ceased to
attract me, and I only wondered how she came to attract her husband.

At Miss Post's, our rooms were quite near each other; and I frequently
passed an hour in the morning with Mrs. Lewis, chatting with her, and
looking about her fanciful apartment. She had dozens of birds of all gay
colors,--paroquets from Brazil, cockatoos, ring-doves, and canaries;
fresh flowers, in vases on the mantel-pieces, and a blue-ribboned guitar
in the corner. No books, no pictures. A great many scarfs, bonnets, and
drapery generally, fell about on the chairs and tables.

She never asked about Auguste, nor talked of her children. Once she said
they were at Madam somebody's, she couldn't think of the name, but a
very nice school, she believed. Everything was "very nice" or "very
horrid." Much of the time she passed in draping herself in various
finery before the mirror, and trying the effects of color on her
complexion. I could think of nothing but field-lilies, that toil not,
and yet exceed Solomon in glory; sometimes it seemed gaudiness rather
than glory, only that her brilliant complexion carried off the brightest
hues, and made them only add to the native splendor of lip and eye. Then
she had a transparent complexion, where the blood rippled vividly and
roseately at the least excitement. This expressed a vivacity of
temperament and a sensitiveness which yet she had not, so