"Very white, miss; you always do, and red cheeks would be as much out of your style as paint on a corpse. I can tell you what you do look like, more than ever I saw you before; that marble figure with the dove on its finger, which stands in the front parlour bay-window." It was Mr. Palma's pet piece of sculpture, a statue of "Innocence," originally intended for his library, but Mrs. Palma had pleaded for permission to exhibit it downstairs. During Regina's residence in New York scarcely a week elapsed without her meeting guests at the dinner-table, and the frequency of the occurrence had quite worn away the awkward shyness with which she had at first confronted strangers. Yet to-day she felt nervously timid as she approached the threshold of the brilliant room, and caught a glimpse of those within. Two gentlemen stood on the rug talking with Olga, a third sat on a sofa engaged in conversation with Mrs. Palma, while Mrs. St. Clare and her daughter entertained two strangers in the opposite corner, and on a _tete-a-tete_ drawn conspicuously forward under the chandelier were Mr. Palma and Mrs. Carew. Regina merely glanced at Olga long enough to observe how handsome she appeared, in her rose-hued silk, with its rich black lace garniture, and the spray of crushed pink roses drooping against her neck, then her gaze dwelt upon the woman under the chandelier. Unusually tall, and proportionately developed, her size might safely have been pronounced heroic, and would by comparison have dwarfed a man of less commanding stature than Mr. Palma; yet so symmetrical was the outline of face and figure that the type seemed wellnigh faultless, and she might have served as a large-limbed rounded model for those majestic women whom Buonaroti painted for the admiration of all humanity, upon the walls of the Sistine. The face was oval, with a remarkably low but full brow, a straight finely-cut nose, very wide between the eyes, which were large, almond-shaped, and of a singularly radiant grey, with long curling gold-tinted lashes. Her complexion was of that peculiar creamy colourlessness, which is found in the smooth petals of a magnolia, and the lips were outlined in bright carmine that hinted at chemical combinations, so ripe and luscious was the tint. Had she really stepped down from some glorious old Venetian picture, bringing that crown of hair, of the true "_biondina_" hue, so rare nowaday, and never seen in perfection save among the marbles and lagunes of crumbling Venice? Was it natural, that mass of very pale gold, so pale that it seemed a flossy heap of raw silk, or had she by some subtle stroke of skill discovered the secret of that beautiful artificial colouring, which was so successfully practised in the days of Giorgione?