"Mrs.Beach Donner!"-- the impression was naturally marked.

Every one betrayed it a little but Mrs.Brookenham, who, more than the others, appeared to have the help of seeing that by a merciful stroke her visitor had just failed to hear.
This visitor, a young woman of striking, of startling appearance, who, in the manner of certain shiny house-doors and railings, instantly created a presumption of the lurking label "Fresh paint," found herself, with an embarrassment oddly opposed to the positive pitch of her complexion, in the presence of a group in which it was yet immediately evident that every one was a friend.

Every one, to show no one had been caught, said something extremely easy; so that it was after a moment only poor Mrs.Donner who, seated close to her hostess, seemed to be in any degree in the wrong.

This moreover was essentially her fault, so extreme was the anomaly of her having, without the means to back it up, committed herself to a "scheme of colour" that was practically an advertisement of courage.

Irregularly pretty and painfully shy, she was retouched from brow to chin like a suburban photograph--the moral of which was simply that she should either have left more to nature or taken more from art.