I studied her with deep interest as we walked along, and no movement or accent of hers was lost upon me. Once she raised her hand--her wide sleeve slipped back and bared a lovely arm--to break off a long scimeter-shaped leaf from a bough overhead. Quicker than thought I sprang at the bough and snapped off the leaf in advance of her, and presented it with a low obeisance. She drew herself up with a look of indignant surprise, but instantly relented as though to a person whose eccentricities, for some reason or other, might better be excused. She did not, however, take the leaf,--it fluttered to the ground. She was not like any other woman,--any woman I had ever seen before. You could not accuse her of hauteur, yet she bore herself like a royal personage, though with no suggestion of affecting that sort of an air. You had to take her as seriously as you would the Czar. I saw this in her brother's attitude toward her. There was none of that condescension in his manner that there often is in our manner toward the women of our households. I began to wonder whether she might not be the queen of the realm! But she was not. She was simply a private citizen. She sat at the dinner table with us, and divided the honors equally with Severnius. I wish I could give you an idea of that dinner,--the dining-room, the service, the whole thing! It surpassed my finest conceptions of taste and elegance. We sat down not merely to eat,--though I was hungry enough!--but to enjoy ourselves in other ways. There was everything for the eye to delight in. The room was rich in artistic decorations upon which the rarest talent must have been employed. The table arrangements were superb; gold and silver, crystal, fine china, embroidered linen, flowers. And the food, served in many courses, was a happy combination of the substantial and the delicate. There was music--not too near--of a bright and lively character. Music enters largely into the life of these people. It seemed to me that something beat time to almost everything we did.