I will tell you one thing, my heart warmed toward my gentle countrywomen! With all their follies and frivolities, with all their inconsistencies and unaccountable ways, their whimsical fancies and petty tempers, their emotions and their susceptibility to new isms and religions, they still represented my highest and best ideals. And I thought of Elodia, sick upstairs from her last night's carousal, with contempt. Chapter 4. ELODIA. "If to her lot some female errors fall, Look to her face and you'll forget them all." --POPE. My contempt for Elodia vanished at the first intimation of her presence. I had expected to meet her with an air of cold superiority, but when she entered the dining-room that evening with her usual careless aplomb, the glance with which she favored me reduced me to my customary attitude toward her,--that of unquestioning admiration. Our physical nature is weak, and this woman dominated my senses completely, with her beauty, with her melodious voice, her singular magnetic attraction, and every casual expression of her face. On that particular evening, her dress was more than ordinarily becoming, I thought. She had left off some of the draperies she usually wore about her shoulders, and her round, perfect waist was more fully disclosed in outline. She was somewhat pale, and her eyes seemed larger and darker than their wont, and had deeper shadows. And a certain air of languor that hung about her was an added grace. She had, however, recovered sufficiently from the dissipations of the day before to make herself uncommonly agreeable, and I never felt in a greater degree the charm and stimulus of her presence and conversation. After dinner she preceded us into the parlor,--which was unusual, for she was always too sparing of her society, and the most we saw of her was at dinner or luncheon time,--and crossed over to an alcove where stood a large and costly harp whose strings she knew well how to thrum. "Elodia, you have never sung for our friend," said Severnius. She shook her head, and letting her eyes rest upon me half-unconsciously--almost as if I were not there in fact, for she had a peculiar way of looking at you without actually seeing you,--she went on picking out the air she had started to play. I subjoined a beseeching look to her brother's suggestive remark, but was not sure she noted it. But presently she began to sing and I dropped into a chair and sat spell-bound. Her voice was sweet, with a quality that stirred unwonted feelings; but it was not that alone. As she stood there in the majesty of her gracious womanhood, her exquisite figure showing at its best, her eyes uplifted and a something that meant power radiating from her whole being, I felt that, do what she might, she was still the grandest creature in that world to me!