Myrtle was fascinated by her visitor, who had that flattering manner which, to those not experienced in the world’s ways, seems to imply unfathomable depths of disinterested devotion.  Then it was so delightful to look upon a perfectly appointed woman,—­one who was as artistically composed as a poem or an opera,—­in whose costume a kind of various rhythm undulated in one fluent harmony, from the spray that nodded on her bonnet to the rosette that blossomed on her sandal.  As for the lady, she was captivated with Myrtle.  There is nothing that your fashionable woman, who has ground and polished her own spark of life into as many and as glittering social facets as it will bear, has a greater passion for than a large rough diamond, which knows nothing of the sea of light it imprisons, and which it will be her pride to have cut into a brilliant under her own eye, and to show the world for its admiration and her own reflected glory.  Mrs. Clymer Ketchum had taken the entire inventory of Myrtle’s natural endowments before the interview was over.  She had no marriageable children, and she was thinking what a killing bait Myrtle would be at one of her stylish parties.

She soon got another letter from Mr. William Murray Bradshaw, which explained the interest he had taken in Madam Delacoste’s school,—­all which she knew pretty nearly beforehand, for she had found out a good part of Myrtle’s history in the half-hour they had spent in company.

“I had a particular reason for my inquiries about the school,” he wrote.  “There is a young girl there I take an interest in.  She is handsome and interesting; and—­though it is a shame to mention such a thing has possibilities in the way of fortune not to be undervalued.  Why can’t you make her acquaintance and be civil to her?  A country girl, but fine old stock, and will make a figure some time or other, I tell you.  Myrtle Hazard,—­that’s her name.  A mere schoolgirl.  Don’t be malicious and badger me about her, but be polite to her.  Some of these country girls have got ‘blue blood’ in them, let me tell you, and show it plain enough.”

("In huckleberry season!”) said Mrs. Ciymer Ketchum, in a parenthesis,—­and went on reading.

“Don’t think I’m one of your love-in-a-cottage sort, to have my head turned by a village beauty.  I’ve got a career before me, Mrs. K., and I know it.  But this is one of my pets, and I want you to keep an eye on her.  Perhaps when she leaves school you wouldn’t mind asking her to come and stay with you a little while.  Possibly I may come and see how she is getting on if you do,—­won’t that tempt you, Mrs. C. K.?”

Mrs. Clymer Ketchum wrote back to her relative how she had already made the young lady’s acquaintance.

“Livingston Jerkins (you remember him) picked her out of the whole lot of girls as the ‘prettiest filly in the stable.’  That’s his horrid way of talking.  But your young milkmaid is really charming, and will come into form like a Derby three-year-old.  There, now, I’ve caught that odious creature’s horse-talk, myself.  You’re dead in love with this girl, Murray, you know you are.