A moment afterward the rustle of a feminine step made Farnham raise his head suddenly from his paper. It was a quick, elastic step, accompanied by that crisp rattle of drapery which the close clinging garments of ladies produced at that season. The door opened, and as the visitor entered Farnham rose in surprise. He had expected to see the usual semi-mendicant, with sad-colored raiment and doleful whine, calling for a subscription for a new "Centennial History," or the confessed genteel beggar whose rent would be due to-morrow. But there was nothing in any way usual in the young person who stood before him. She was a tall and robust girl of eighteen or nineteen, of a singularly fresh and vigorous beauty. The artists forbid us to look for physical perfection in real people, but it would have been hard for the coolest-headed studio-rat to find any fault in the slender but powerful form of this young woman. Her color was deficient in delicacy, and her dark hair was too luxuriant to be amenable to the imperfect discipline to which it had been accustomed; but the eye of Andrea, sharpened by criticising Raphael, could hardly have found a line to alter in her. The dress of that year was scarcely more reticent in its revelations than the first wet cloth with which a sculptor swathes his kneaded clay; and pretty women walked in it with almost the same calm consciousness of power which Phryne displayed before her judges. The girl who now entered Farnham's library had thrown her shawl over one arm, because the shawl was neither especially ornamental nor new, and she could not afford to let it conceal her dress of which she was innocently proud; for it represented not only her beautiful figure with few reserves, but also her skill and taste and labor. She had cut the pattern out of an illustrated newspaper, had fashioned and sewed it with her own hands; she knew that it fitted her almost as well as her own skin; and although the material was cheap and rather flimsy, the style was very nearly the same as that worn the same day on the Boulevard of the Italians. Her costume was completed by a pair of eyeglasses with steel rims, which looked odd on her rosy young face. "I didn't send in my name," she began with a hurried and nervous utterance, which she was evidently trying to make easy and dashing. "because you did not know me from Adam----I have been trying to see you for some time," she continued. "It has been my loss that you have not succeeded. Allow me to give you a chair." She flushed and seemed not at all comfortable. This grave young man could not be laughing at her; of course not; she was good-looking and had on a new dress; but she felt all her customary assurance leaving her, and was annoyed. She tried to call up an easy and gay demeanor, but the effort was not entirely successful. She said, "I called this morning--it may surprise you to receive a visit from a young lady----" "I am too much pleased to leave room for surprise."