It has already been said that this strange girl, extraordinary by her situation as a person accused of crimes so heinous, and perhaps still more so by her manner of bearing up against the terrors and mortifications of her condition, as well as by the mystery which so completely veiled her past life, was not a beauty, in the common acceptation of the term. Nevertheless, not one female in ten thousand would sooner ensnare the heart of a youth, by means of her personal attractions alone. It was not regularity of features, nor brilliancy of complexion, nor lustre of the eyes, nor any of the more ordinary charms, that gave her this power; but an indescribable union of feminine traits, in which intellectual gifts, spirit, tenderness, and modesty, were so singularly blended, as to leave it questionable which had the advantage. Her eyes were of a very gentle and mild expression, when in a state of rest; excited, they were capable of opening windows to the inmost soul. Her form was faultless; being the true medium between vigorous health and womanly delicacy; which, in this country, implies much less of the robust and solid than one meets with in the other hemisphere. It is not easy to tell how we acquire those in-and-in habits, which get to be a sort of second nature, and almost bestow on us new instincts. It is by these secret sympathies, these tastes that pervade the moral, as the nerves form a natural telegraph through the physical, system, that one _feels_ rather than _sees_, when he is in the company of persons in his own class in life. Dress will not afford an infallible test, on such an occasion, though the daw is instantly seen not to be the peacock; neither will _ad_dress, for the distinctive qualities lie much deeper than the surface. But so it is; a gentleman can hardly be brought into the company of man or woman, without his at once perceiving whether he or she belong to his own social caste or not. What is more, if a man of the world, he detects almost instinctively the _degrees_ of caste, as well as the greater subdivisions, and knows whether his strange companions have seen much, or little; whether their gentility is merely the result of the great accident, with its customary advantages, or has been smoothed over by a liberal intercourse with the better classes of a general society. Most of all, may a travelled person be known—and that more especially in a provincial country, like our own—from one that has not travelled; though the company kept in other lands necessarily draws an obvious distinction between the last. Now, John Wilmeter, always mingling with the best society of his own country, had also been abroad, and had obtained that “second sight” which so insensibly, but certainly, increases the vision of all Americans who enjoy the advantage of acquiring it. What is more, though his years and the plans of his uncle for his future welfare, had prevented his staying in Europe long enough