Isabel inclined to range herself in the last category.

Madame Merle had thick, fair hair, arranged somehow "classically" and as if she were a Bust, Isabel judged--a Juno or a Niobe; and large white hands, of a perfect shape, a shape so perfect that their possessor, preferring to leave them unadorned, wore no jewelled rings.

Isabel had taken her at first, as we have seen, for a Frenchwoman; but extended observation might have ranked her as a German--a German of high degree, perhaps an Austrian, a baroness, a countess, a princess.

It would never have been supposed she had come into the world in Brooklyn--though one could doubtless not have carried through any argument that the air of distinction marking her in so eminent a degree was inconsistent with such a birth.

It was true that the national banner had floated immediately over her cradle, and the breezy freedom of the stars and stripes might have shed an influence upon the attitude she there took towards life.