say it was the loveliest party she ever was to without
suspecting her of a humorous intention. By the sly gleam of her eye one
should know she was doing it to amuse you, imitating a child, a
country-woman, a shop-girl, for the sake of promoting an easy
pleasantness. With her bearing of entire dignity, her honest
handsomeness, her air of secure and generous wealth, she was truly not
one whom the ordinary public would feel disposed to seek reasons for
excluding. Leslie and her mother had refrained from presenting to her
particular persons in the company. All remarks heard from those who had
been presented led to an almost certainty that the new Americans were a
success.

"Do look at Estelle!" exclaimed Mrs. Hawthorne. "She's been dancing one
dance after the other, and sits there now looking cool as a cucumber. I
would have her life if it could make me into a bone like her. Miss
Foss,"--she was diverted from the envious contemplation of
Estelle,--"who is that lovely girl over there?"

"Which one? There are so many to-night!"

"The white one with the knob of dark hair down in her neck. An Italian,
I guess. Rather small. See who I mean? There. She's going to speak to
the little fellow at the piano."

Leslie looked, but did not at once answer. The girl in white was indeed
strangely, at this moment poignantly, lovely. Some intensity of
repressed feeling made her cheek of a white-rose pallor, and her dark
eyes, those spots of velvet shadow, mysteriously deep. She had gone
where the piano stood in a bower of palm and bamboo, with Signor
Ceccherelli seated before it, busy wiping the sweat of his brow. More
than one had gone to him that evening to ask for some favorite piece.
She was perhaps just requesting him to play The Blue Danube, or La
Manola or Bavardage, and it was merely the romantic way of her beauty to
express a sense of doom. She spoke quietly to the pianist, who looked at
her while she spoke and when she ceased made with his head a motion of
assent. She turned and went from the room.

"It is my sister Brenda," said Leslie. "How singular you should not
recognize her!"

"I've never met her, my dear. You don't remember. The time I came to tea
she was in town taking a music lesson. The time I came to dinner she was
in bed with a headache. Well, well, she's not a bit like the rest of
you, is she? I took her for an Italian."

"She was only twelve when we came over here, it has somehow molded her.
I was seventeen; t