I forget whether you were in London at the time... No, of course not. Well, I can testify to you that her arrival created quite a stir. The _rastaquouère_ type is not unknown to me by any means, but I thought Mrs. Sawyer a very favourable specimen. Not more than two or three and twenty, though these South American women reach their prime very early--and pass it; jet-black hair and eyes, dead-white face, scarlet lips, really beautiful teeth; altogether a very striking young woman, with just enough of a foreign accent to give an added charm--for those who like that sort of thing. She had a wistful, mysterious manner which accorded well with the _ensemble_ ... and with the story they told about her. I never heard her maiden name, but I was told at once that she was one of the greatest heiresses in Peru--or it may have been Argentina. This Sawyer was a ne'er-do-well Irishman who had been sent to South America ... as one _does_ have to send these people sometimes; he fascinated her, married her, beat her (I should think) and drank himself to death, leaving her utterly broken-hearted and disillusionized--not with _him_ alone, but with the world... She had come to Europe to find a new life. Such was the story that Connie Maitland shouted at one; and, if poor Mrs. Sawyer overheard it, so much the worse for her... A romantic setting, do you not agree? If you had seen her come into a room with those great, tragic eyes sweeping face after face as though she were looking for the _one_ man who would gather up the fragments of her broken youth... If I had been a _man_... Superb diamonds, I need _hardly_ say; and almost an arrogance of mourning, as though she would _not_ be comforted... All the young men followed her with their eyes--spell-bound. And some men no longer young...