is a small interesting-looking girl whose chief beauty lies in her expression which is certainly very charming. I was conscious of a calm and satisfied feeling the moment I saw her. Her eyes which are raised with a certain appeal to your face, are blue, while her lips that break into smiles only at rare moments, are rosy and delicately curved. In her riding-habit she looks like a child, but when dressed for the street she surprises you with the reserved and womanly air with which she carries her proud head. Altogether she is a sweet study to me, alluring me with her glance yet awing me by her dainty ladyhood, a ladyhood too unconscious to be affected and yet so completely a part of her whole delicate being, that you could as soon dissociate the bloom from the rose, as the air of highborn reserve, from this sweet scion of one of New York’s oldest families.
“I was mounting my horse when our eyes first met, and I never shall forget her look of delighted surprise. Did she recognize in me the friend I now hope to become? Later we were introduced by Mr. Sylvester who had been so kind as to accompany me that day. The way in which he said to her, ‘This is Paula,’ proved that I was no new topic of conversation between them, and indeed she afterwards explained to me that she had been forewarned of my arrival during an afternoon call at his house. There was in this first interview none of the unnecessary gush which you have so often reprobated as childish; indeed Miss Stuyvesant is not a person with whom one would presume to be familiar, nor was it till we had met several times that any acknowledgement was made of the mutual interest with which we found ourselves inspired. Cousin Ona to whom I had naturally spoken of the little lady, wished me to cultivate her acquaintance more assiduously, but I knew that if I had excited in her the same interest she had awakened in me, this would not be necessary; our friendship would grow of itself and blossom without any hothouse forcing. And so it did. One day she came to the riding-school with her eyes like stars and her cheeks like the oleanders in your sitting-room. Her brightness was so contagious, I stepped up to her. But she greeted me with almost formal reserve, and mounting her horse, proceeded to