To all seven of the ages was this woman comprehensible.

Old Bolivar Kent, eighty-six and shuffling his short steps to the grave not far ahead, understood her with one look; the but adolescent Guy McCormick, hovering tragically on the verge of his first public shave, divined her quite as capably; the middle-yeared Westley Keyts read her so unerringly on a day when she first regaled his vision that he toiled for half an hour as one entranced, disengaging what he believed to be porter-house steaks long after the porter-house line in the beef under his hand had been passed.
In short, Miss Lansdale was understood spontaneously--to borrow a phrase from the _Argus_--"by each and all who had the good fortune to be present," for she was dowered with that quick-drawing charm which has worked a familiar spell upon the sons of men in all times.

She was incontestably feminine.

She gave the woman-call.

That she seemed to give it against her wish,--without intention,--that I was alone in detecting this, were trifles beside the point.