Once within this inner court of hospitality, her manner had changed instantly. The change was so unnatural as to be almost appalling: it was like a corpse putting on a gracious, gay life again. Evening found me still charmed to my seat, a willing listener. I do not think even now that it was because I was an inexperienced, uncritical youth, that I was so readily puzzled and interested. I have written this paper mainly for the purpose of sketching a real character, thinking her now, as I did then, a curious study for the dilettante in anomalies of human nature, as well as one of the most noteworthy women of her time from extraneous circumstances. Once having taken up her _rôle_ as hostess, the roughness and vulgarity slid from her as by a magic touch,--as coarse armor with which she kept her neighbors at bay. She had the keen insight, the delicate instinct, dainty in expression of manner and speech, of a woman _habituée du monde_ for many crowded and watchful years. From the time of her first marriage she spent her winters in Washington, at first notes as a beauty and _bel esprit_, then an object of interest from her eccentricities, her cool skill, and long familiarity with the private political life of the capital. Her manner had the quaint archness, over-lying intense pride, of an old French Marquise, to whom Bonaparte is "plebeian," and the fruitful, vulgar present worthy only of being dismissed with a shrug of the shoulders. I went day after day to see her,--of course, at her own request: with the same odd, half-rebuked feeling with which I opened the Indian mound,--only that which was to be unearthed from this grave was of far more interest to a man of the world, and much less holy, than the poor savages' _cache_ with their dead in it. I did not broach the subject of the Steadmans, hoping to obtain some clew to a weak point in her nature which could be touched and roused to sympathy. I never found it. I think she enjoyed my visits. I was fresh from the world from which she had long been shut out, brought its breath with me, was eager and appreciative. As a reward, she poured out an exhaustless store of anecdote. Her times had covered a broad field, and one of glaring contrasts; not an Indian war back to the Colonial era with which she was not familiar; she remembered the first proclamation of the Declaration of Independence; had known Paine, Lafayette, and Lee; sat on the side of the court-room devoted to Burr's adherents during his trial at Richmond, a young and brilliant beauty, while her husband faced her on the other; talked of Benton, Clay, Webster, then political leaders, as "those young men,--promising, but crude, Sir! crude!" I afterwards learned the estimation these men had for her.