CHAPTER XXVI.
THE DISTINGUISHED GENTLEMAN FROM NEW YORK Meantime, the Countess St.Auban, innocent of these plans which had gone forward regarding her, completed her attendance at the entertainment which the evening was offering the elite of Washington, and in due time arrived at the entrance of her hotel.
She found the private entrance to-night occupied by the usual throng, but hurried from the carriage step across the pavement and through the open door.
She made no ordinary picture now as she approached the brighter lights of the interior.

Her garb, cut in that fashion which gave so scant aid to nature's outlines, was widely though not extremely hooped, the fabric of daintily flowered silk.

As she pushed back the deep, double fronted dolman which served her for a wrap, her shoulders showed white and beautiful, as also the round column of her neck, shadowed only by one long drooping curl, and banded by a gleaming circlet of many colored gems.

Her dark hair, though drawn low upon the temples in acknowledgment of the prevailing mode, was bound in fashion of her own by a gem-clasped, golden fillet, under which it broke into a riot of lesser curls which swept over ears and temples.

Here and there a gleaming jewel confined some such truant lock, so that she glittered, half-barbaric, as she walked, surmounted by a thousand trembling points of light.