"What does she not?" he answered. "There is scarcely an accomplishment under the sun or moon that she has not at her command. In a word, Stella, Lenore is the outcome of the higher civilization; she is the type of our latest requirement, which demands more than mere beauty, and will not be satisfied with mere cleverness; she rides beautifully and fearlessly; she plays and sings better than one-half the women one hears at concerts; they tell me that no woman in London can dance with greater grace, and I have seen her land a salmon of twenty pounds with all the skill of a Scotch gillie." Stella was silent a moment. "You have described a paragon, uncle. How all her women friends must detest her." He laughed. "I think you are wrong. I never knew a woman more popular with her sex." "How proud her husband must be of her," murmured Stella. "Her husband! What husband? She is not married." Stella laughed. "Not married! Such a perfection unmarried! Is it possible that mankind can permit such a paragon to remain single. Uncle, they must be afraid of her!" "Well, perhaps they are--some of them," he assented, smiling. "No," he continued, musingly; "she is not married. Lenore might have been married long before this: she has had many chances, and some of them great ones. She might have been a duchess by this time if she had chosen." "And why did she not?" said Stella. "Such a woman should be nothing less than a duchess. It is a duchess whom you have described, uncle." "I don't know," he said, simply. "I don't think anyone knows; perhaps she does not know herself." Stella was silent for a moment; her imagination was hard at work. "Is she rich, poor--what, uncle?" "I don't know. Rich, I should think," he answered. "And what is her other name, or has she only one name, like a princess or a church dignitary?" "Her name is Beauchamp--Lady Lenore Beauchamp." "Lady!" repeated Stella, surprised. "She has a title, then; it was all that was wanted." "Yes, she is the daughter of a peer." "What a happy woman she must be;--is she a woman or a girl, though. I have imagined her a woman of thirty." He laughed. "Lady Lenore is--is"--he thought a moment--"just twenty-three." "That's a woman," said Stella, decidedly. "And this wonderful creature is at the Hall, within sight of us. Tell me, uncle, do they keep her in a glass case, and only permit her to be seen as a curiosity at so much a head? They ought to do so, you know." He laughed, and his hand stroked her hair. "What is it Voltaire says, Stella," he remarked. "'If you want a woman to hate another, praise her to the first one.'" Stella's face flushed hotly, and she laughed with just a touch of scorn. "Hate! I don't hate her, uncle--I admire her; I should like to see her, to touch her--to feel for myself the wonderful charm of which you speak. I should like to see how she bears it; it must be strange, you know, to be superior to all one's kind."