She gave warm, quick grasps from a firm hand, gave them all round, not seeming to know she hadn't met Anne and Lydia, and at once took off her bonnet. It had strings and altogether belonged to an epoch at least twenty years away. The bonnet she "laid aside" on a table with a certain absent care, as ladies were accustomed to treat bonnets before they got into the way of jabbing them with pins. Then she sat down, earnestly solicitous and attentive as at a consultation. Anne thought she was the most beautiful person she had ever seen. It was a pity Miss Amabel Bracebridge could not have known that impetuous verdict. It would have brought her a surprised, spontaneous laugh: nothing could have convinced her it was not delicious foolery. She was tall and broad and heavy. When she stood in the doorway, she seemed to fill it. Now that she sat in the chair, she filled that, a soft, stout woman with great shoulders and a benign face, a troubled face, as if she were used to soothing ills, yet found for them no adequate recompense. Her dark grey dress was buttoned in front, after the fashion of a time long past. It was so archaic in cut, with a little ruffle at neck and sleeves, that it did more than adequate service toward maturing her. Indeed, there was no youth about Miss Amabel, except the youth of her eyes and smile. There were childlike wistfulness and hope, but experience chiefly, of life, of the unaccounted for, the unaccountable. She had, above all, an expression of well-wishing. Now she sat and looked about her. "Dear me!" she said, "how pleasant it is to see this house open again." "But it's been open," Lydia impulsively reminded her. "Yes," said Miss Amabel. "But not this way." She turned to Jeff and regarded him anxiously. "Don't you smoke?" she asked. He laughed again. He was exceedingly pleased, Anne saw, merely at seeing her. Miss Amabel was exactly as he remembered her. "Yes," said he. "Want us to?" She put up her long eyebrows and smiled as if in some amusement at herself. "I've learned lately," she said, "that gentlemen are so devoted to it they feel lost without it." "Light up, Choate," said Jeffrey. "My sisters won't mind. Will you?" He interrogated Anne. "They get along with me." No, Anne didn't mind, and she rose and brought matches and little trays. Lydia often wondered how Anne knew the exact pattern of man's convenience. But though Choate accepted a cigar, he did not light it. "Not now," he said, when Jeffrey offered him a light; he laid the cigar down, tapping it once or twice with his fine hand, and Anne thought he refrained in courtesy toward her and Lydia. "This is very pleasant," said the colonel suddenly. "It's good to see you, Amabel. Now I feel myself at home."