Margaret was just turned twenty.  As she paused there in the doorway her physical perfection flashed upon me for the first time.  Of course I do not mean perfection, for perfection has no promise in it, rather the sad note of limit, and presently recession.  In the rounded, exquisite lines of her figure there was the promise of that ineffable fullness and delicacy of womanhood which all the world raves about and destroys and mourns.  It is not fulfilled always in the most beautiful, and perhaps never except to the woman who loves passionately, and believes she is loved with a devotion that exalts her body and soul above every other human being.

It is certain that Margaret’s beauty was not classic.  Her features were irregular even to piquancy.  The chin had strength; the mouth was sensitive and not too small; the shapely nose with thin nostrils had an assertive quality that contradicted the impression of humility in the eyes when downcast; the large gray eyes were uncommonly soft and clear, an appearance of alternate tenderness and brilliancy as they were veiled or uncovered by the long lashes.  They were gently commanding eyes, and no doubt her most effective point.  Her abundant hair, brown with a touch of red in it in some lights, fell over her broad forehead in the fashion of the time.  She had a way of carrying her head, of throwing it back at times, that was not exactly imperious, and conveyed the impression of spirit rather than of mere vivacity.  These details seem to me all inadequate and misleading, for the attraction of the face that made it interesting is still undefined.  I hesitate to say that there was a dimple near the corner of her mouth that revealed itself when she smiled lest this shall seem mere prettiness, but it may have been the keynote of her face.  I only knew there was something about it that won the heart, as a too conscious or assertive beauty never does.  She may have been plain, and I may have seen the loveliness of her nature, which I knew well, in features that gave less sign of it to strangers.  Yet I noticed that Mr. Lyon gave her a quick second glance, and his manner was instantly that of deference, or at least attention, which he had shown to no other lady in the room.  And the whimsical idea came into my mind—­we are all so warped by international possibilities—­to observe whether she did not walk like a countess (that is, as a countess ought to walk) as she advanced to shake hands with my wife.  It is so easy to turn life into a comedy!

Margaret’s great-grandmother—­no, it was her great-great-grandmother, but we have kept the Revolutionary period so warm lately that it seems near—­was a Newport belle, who married an officer in the suite of Rochambeau what time the French defenders of liberty conquered the women of Rhode Island.  After the war was over, our officer resigned his love of glory for the heart of one of the loveliest women and the care of the best plantation on the Island.