d not at first feel herself to be conspicuous. But all the eyes in
the room, before she had gone half her way, were fastened upon her, a
natural and legitimate mark. One might now without impertinence have the
satisfaction of a good look at the newly come American who had taken the
big house on the Lungarno; the women might study the fashion of her hair
and dress.

She was smiling faintly, but fixedly; she smiled, indeed, all the time,
as if smiles had been an indispensable article of wear at a party. The
least of her smiles brought dimples into view, and her dimples seemed
multitudinous, though there were really only three in her face and one
of those irregular things called apple-seeds. Her agreeably blunted
features and peachy roundness of cheek belonged to a good-humored,
unimposing type, which took on a certain nobility in her case from being
carried high on a strong, round neck over a splendid broad breast,
partly bare this evening, and seen to be white as milk, as swans'-down,
as pearl.

If one had tried to define the look which left one so little doubt as to
her nationality, one would perhaps have said it was a combination of
fearlessness and accessibility. She feared not you, nor should you fear
her; she counted on your friendliness, you might count on hers.

She was a person simple in the main. The colors she had selected to wear
accorded with the rest, showing little intricacy of taste. The two silks
composing her dress were respectively the blue of a summer morning and
the pink of a rose. From cushioned and dimpled shoulders the bodice
tapered to as fine a waist as a Paris dressmaker had found possible to
bring about in a woman who, despite a veritable yearning to look
slender, cared also for freedom to breathe, and, as she said with a
sigh, guessed she must make up her mind to be happy without looking like
a toothpick. At the back of the waist, the dress leapt suddenly out and
away from the dorsal column--every lady's dress did that for a season or
two at the time we are telling of, and at every step she took the back
of her skirt gave a bob, for the bustle was supplemented by three or
four concealed semi-circles of thin steel, reeds we called them, which
hit against you as you went and sprang lightly away from your heels.

The arrangement of Mrs. Hawthorne's hair equalled in artificiality the
mode of her dress: the front locks were clipped and twisted into little
curls, the back locks drawn to the top o