He was shown into a little parlor on the first floor, and, pausing a moment at the door, he looked at his patient. A very beautiful woman, he said to himself, but just such an one as he did not like. She sat in a low chair, her back to the window and her face turned toward him. She wore a simple white-cambric wrapper. Her beauty had no external adornment whatever. It shone upon him startlingly and unexpectedly, as if you should open a closet, where you were prepared to find an old family portrait of some stiff Puritan grandmother, and be confronted, instead, by one of Murillo's Spanish women, passionate and splendid. For Miss Colchester was not unlike those Murillo-painted beauties. She had a clear, dark skin, through which the changeful color glowed as if her cheeks were transparent; dark, heavily-falling hair; low brow; great, passionate, slumbrous eyes; proud, straight features. There was nothing like a New-England woman about her. That was Dr. Huger's first thought; and she read it, either through some subtle clairvoyant power, or, a simpler solution, because she knew that every one, who saw her under these cool skies of the temperate zone, would naturally think that thought first. Her full, ripe lips parted in a singular smile, as she said,—
"You are thinking that I am not of the North. You are right. I was born in New Orleans. I am a Creole of the Creoles. I don't like the people here. I sent for you because you were German, at least by descent."
"How did you know it?"
It was an abrupt question for a man of the doctor's habitual grave courtesy; but she seemed to him unique, and it was impossible to maintain his old equipoise in her presence. She had read his thought like a witch. Was there something uncanny about her?
"How did I know you were German?" She smiled. "Because your name suggested the idea, and then I saw you in the street, and your features indorsed the hint your name had given me."
"I am glad that anything should have made you think of me."
It was one of the conventional platitudes, of which self-complacent men, like Dr. Huger, keep a stock on hand for their lady friends. Miss Colchester saw its poverty, and smiled at it, as she answered him,—
"I think of every one with whom I come in contact; and I thought of you, especially, because I intended from the first, if there were a good physician here, to consult him."
The doctor looked into her radiant face.