Miss Lady had indeed, within the last few months, rapidly grown up into compellingly beautiful young womanhood. Much of the girlishness was gone and the firmer roundness of full femininity had taken its place. Her neck, a column of white above its frill of laces, rose strong and fine. Her hair, unlighted by the sun, was dark and full of velvet shadows. Her eyes, with long lashes softly falling, offered the shadows and the mysteries of the dawn. Her figure asked small aid, and, needing none, carried, and was not made by, the well-cut gown of light silken weave, dotted here and there with small red fleur-de-lis. A maze of long scarlet ribbons hung from Miss Lady's waist, after a fashion of her own, and for purposes perhaps remotely connected with a tiny fan which now appeared, and now again was lost. A cool, sweet ripeness was reflected in the spot of color here and there upon the fawn-colored wide brim of the hat, upon the smooth cheek, on the lips of the short and high curved mouth. As she walked, there was heard the whispering rustle of the Feminine; that sound indefinable, which creeps upon man's unwitting senses and enslaves him, he knows not how or when or why. Well enough all this served to set in tumult the pulses of at least one who saw Miss Lady, fresh as a little white cloud, warm as a tiny spot of yellow sunlight, cool and mysterious as the morning, thus framed as a picture on the stair. John Eddring and his mother, unannounced by reason of the slothfulness of a negro messenger, sat in the hotel waiting-room, which served as the "ladies' parlor," opening out near the foot of the stairway. And so it chanced that they saw Miss Lady and her companion as they descended. It seemed to Eddring that this vision on the stair was the most beautiful thing in all the world. He was smitten at once dumb and motionless. He felt his mother's hand on his arm. "John," said she, "did you see that girl? She was _perfectly_ beautiful!" The touch aroused him. She saw it all written in his face.