All this was quickly noted by a young girl who stood on its
threshold at the close of a dull January day.
The card that had been brought to the Senator bore the name of "Carmen
de Haro"; and modestly in the right hand corner, in almost microscopic
script, the further description of herself as "Artist." Perhaps the
picturesqueness of the name, and its historic suggestion caught the
scholar's taste, for when to his request, through his servant, that she
would be kind enough to state her business, she replied as frankly that
her business was personal to himself, he directed that she should be
admitted. Then entrenching himself behind his library table, overlooking
a bastion of books, and a glacis of pamphlets and papers, and throwing
into his forehead and eyes an expression of utter disqualification for
anything but the business before him, he calmly awaited the intruder.
She came, and for an instant stood, hesitatingly, framing herself as
a picture in the door. Mrs. Hopkinson was right,--she had "no style,"
unless an original and half-foreign quaintness could be called so.
Pages:
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170