And so, protesting and insisting, he led our reluctant hero by the hand until he at last introduced him into a spacious and sunlit dining-room, rendered additionally cheerful by a large fire of cedar logs that crackled in the marble fireplace. Here a table spread with snowy napery and sparkling with crystal and silver was prepared for an ample breakfast; and, as they entered, the slender and graceful figure of a young lady, clad entirely in white, arose from where she sat at the head of the board behind the tea-urn. In response to her father's introduction, she replied to our young gentleman's profound bow with all the ease and dignity of deportment imaginable. At that time Miss Arabella Desmond was one of the most perfect beauties in the United States. With a figure of rounded yet slender contour, she bore herself with an ease and grace of deportment that at once charmed and delighted the beholder. Her features presented the most exquisite delicacy of outline, and the rich abundance of her raven tresses matched in their color the dark and lustrous eyes, whose liquid brilliancy was ineffably enhanced by the ivory delicacy of her complexion. Add, if you please, to those graces of person a wit at once subtle and alert and an address as amiable as it was entertaining, and you shall possess an image--imperfect, to be sure--of that famous beauty whose hermit-like seclusion from the world and whose mysterious personality had now for above two years been a matter of wonder and of speculation to the elegant society of Bordentown, that would gladly have received so admirable an addition into its fold.