for the moment had not faded, nor the infinitely
fine vibration it set up in any degree ceased her
own first sight of the striking apparition, then un
heralded and unexplained: the slim, constantly
pale, delicately haggard, anomalously, agreeably
angular young person, of not more than two-and-
twenty in spite of her marks, whose hair was some
how exceptionally red even for the real thing,
which it innocently confessed to being, and whose
clothes were remarkably black even for robes of
mourning, which was the meaning they expressed.
It was New York mourning, it was New York hair,
it was a New York history, confused as yet, but
multitudinous, of the loss of parents, brothers, sis
ters, almost every human appendage, all on a scale
and with a sweep that had required the greater stage;
it was a New York legend of affecting, of romantic
isolation, and, beyond everything, it was by most ac
counts, in respect to the mass of money so piled on
the girl's back, a set of New York possibilities. She
was alone, she was stricken, she was rich, and, in
particular, she was strange a combination in itself
of a nature to engage Mrs. Stringham's attention.
But it was the strangeness that most determined
our good lady's sympathy, convinced as she was
that it was much greater than any one else any
one but the sole Susan Stringham supposed.
Susan privately settled it that Boston was not in
the least seeing her, was only occupied with her
seeing Boston, and that any assumed affinity be-

[[118]]

p117 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p118w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p119

v?