“What artistic taste you must have when you are so fastidious about harmony in colors,” I said, admiringly.

“One might as well get all the possible consolation out of things.  The time for enjoying them is short, and very uncertain.”

She drew a low ottoman and sat down close to me.  “I have a long, sad story to tell you, and I want to be within touch of your hand.  You will perhaps be too hard on me.”

She sat, her face turned partly from me, gazing intently into the fire.  Perhaps she had a natural dread of going over a chapter in her life she might wish had never been written.

Meanwhile the wonder kept growing on me why this exquisite woman should come to me for sympathy.  A feeling of pride, too, began swelling my heart to think that I could be of use to others than the hungry and naked, while I thought of the surprising account I should have to give at the dinner-table that evening, of my adventure.  My self-complacency was destined to a rude shock.  She turned to me suddenly, and asked, “How old would you take me to be?” I looked my surprise, no doubt, but began directly to examine critically the face before me.  “I want you to tell me the truth.  We don’t value flattery from our own sex; at least, I do not.”

I could see no trace of time’s unwelcome tooth in that smooth, ivory skin, as unwrinkled as a baby’s face, while the rounded outlines and dimples would have graced a debutante.

“You are a long time deciding,” she said, playfully—­the color coming fitfully under my scrutiny.

“I will hazard twenty, but you may be older.”

“You think not any younger than that?” The curving lashes drooped and an entirely new expression swept over the charming face.

“Now you look almost a child,” I exclaimed with surprise.  “You are a mystery to me, and I won’t try to guess any more, for it is pure guess work.”

She laughed merrily.  “You are greatly mistaken.  I was twenty-six yesterday.”  I may have looked incredulous, and she was very keen to read my thoughts.

“You do not believe me.  Did you ever hear of a woman over twenty making herself out older than she was?”

“My experience is but limited.”  I still believed that for some reason of her own she was deceiving me respecting her age.

“When you hear my story your surprise will be that I do not look six and thirty, instead of a decade younger.”

Her next question was more startling than the first.  “How do you like Mr. Winthrop?”

I replied guardedly that I liked him very well.

“Excuse me, but that is not a correct reply.  No one that cares for him at all does so in that moderate fashion.  They either love or hate him.”

“Have you ever known him intimately enough to be able to say how he is liked, or deserves to be?”

She answered me by a low ripple of laughter.  My perplexity was increasing, but I quite decided this Hermione Le Grange, as she called herself, had not a very sad heart to get comforted.