Emmie followed my lead, and we talked of the beauty of the evening, and the wonderful effects of sunset coloring in different states of the atmosphere; but my thoughts, I must confess, were busied still with the beautiful being whom my eyes detected in the hotel gardens below us. How utterly unlike my early dreams and visions, and yet what an adorable creature she was. This was, perhaps, rather more than I allowed to myself on that first evening; but day by day my admiration for Madame B. deepened, and I began to contrast with her all other women of my acquaintance, but always to their disparagement. Even Emmie, my bright little niece, lost something of her piquancy during this process. Inclined to admire all that was foreign, the smooth, shining hair parted on Emmie's forehead looked to me now "so dreadfully English." I had always thought Miriam a sensible woman for forbidding her girls to disfigure themselves with fringes--_idiot fringes_, I had called them, when in my ignorance I aided and abetted her decision. Ah, well! one's mind grows broader with more varied experience, and mine now widened fast, until I positively longed to see some wandering tendrils straying across my niece's brow, if a row of bright wavy locks was impossible for her. I did not tell her so then, and I was glad afterward that I had been wise enough to avoid the subject. We were by no means the only inmates of our hotel to whom the beautiful unknown became an object of interest. Her eyes, her hair, her diamonds, her languid grace, were topics often dwelt on in the smoking-room; and as I sat puffing silently my evening pipe of peace, I gleaned at last a few facts concerning her. Madame B. had come to Salzbrun for her health, but what was the matter with her nobody knew. Frau Schimpf came for health too, but she was also the lady's paid companion. Every morning when we went to the spring for my draught of mineral water, the dumpy little German was there before us getting hers also; but the stately beauty never came. And at last I learned that, instead of drinking the waters like the vulgar herd of us, Madame B. was amongst the selecter few for whom a course of mud-baths only was prescribed. Emmie's mirth had been greatly excited at the notion of these baths, and she was always begging me to let her try one, "just for the fun of it," because she was "convinced that they must make one feel like an eel or a tadpole, and she wanted to find out which of the two it was." The very mention of such creatures in connection with the baths seemed a positive insult to Madame B.