"Yes, thank you," answered Katrine. "She's never better than when she's traveling, you know."
Miss Katrine Marchfield was one of those girls who, though not beautiful, are more than pretty. She was too attractive to be fairly disposed of by being credited with mere prettiness; yet she had not fully that quality, august and indefinable, which confers upon the fortunate possessor real beauty. She was slightly above medium height, and could now, having been out for a couple of winters, carry herself exquisitely. A beautiful figure could not have been denied her by the most envious rival; and her fairly broad shoulders, always drawn well back, gave her a charming air of delicately athletic power. Her face, at first merely piquant,—perhaps from the slight arching of her eyebrows and the wholly delightful way in which she carried her head,—showed at a second glance, by the height of the forehead, the clear chiseling of the features, and the intelligent sympathy of the gray eyes, a true and sensitive nobility of nature which gave to her countenance a charm at once fine and abiding. Her eyes Jack—and for that matter a score of adoring youths—considered her greatest beauty. They were at times thoughtful, at others sparkling with vivacity. Now and then they might be surprised in a quickly vanishing expression wistful or even almost sad, as if some deeper self looked out but did not will to be seen. A mouth small, the upper lip a trifle fuller than the under; a nose almost Greek; and above the high forehead a cloud of dusky brown hair,—these physical attributes, with a sympathetic temperament and a mind sensible yet deliciously feminine, a pleasant voice and a delightful laugh, had won for Katrine Marchfield more conquests than could be boasted by many an older woman of really marked beauty.
Her relations with Jack Castleport, whether she had admitted it to herself or not, had for some time been greatly different from those she held with any one else. They had met at a dinner shortly after Katrine, for two years doubly orphaned, had come from Philadelphia to live with her widowed aunt, Mrs. Fairhew, in Boston. After meeting Katrine, Castleport had taken to calling at Mrs. Fairhew's, at first nominally to see the aunt and later frankly to see the niece. He was at this time a Junior at Harvard, and a popular man on both sides of the river; the acquaintance during his Senior year had ripened into friendship, and the most important feature of Class Day for Jack was the presence of Miss Marchfield; he had thought more of her in the audience than of the dignitaries on the platform when on Commencement Day he had taken his degree; and what with dancing with Katrine, driving with Katrine, and dreaming of Katrine for the winter which lay between Harvard and this summer, he had come to measure the uses of life chiefly as they might help to make her care for him or to reveal to him what were her feelings toward him.
For a moment or two the three Americans stood talking near the desk of the hotel. Then Miss Marchfield stepped forward and dropped into the mail-box some letters she was carrying.
"If you'll excuse me one minute," she said, "I'll send for Aunt Anne, and see about dinner. Of course you'll stay to dine?"
"Delighted," Jack said. "That is," he added, "if it's all right for us in these clothes. You see, we stupidly came off without evening togs."
"That's all right," Katrine returned; and went away smiling.
Jack looked after her with an expression which made Jerry smile.
"Gad! She's looking ten times better than when she left home," Tab said in an undertone.