"Sets himself up for a
gentleman, does he? He ain't no more a gentleman than wot I be!" This
speech of his reported to me will show how impossible the creature
was. He was simply a person one does not know, and I was not long in
letting him see it.
And there was the woman who was to play so active a part in my later
history, of whom it will be well to speak at once. I had remarked her
on the main street before I knew her identity. I am bound to say she
stood out from the other women of Red Gap by reason of a certain dash,
not to say beauty. Rather above medium height and of pleasingly full
figure, her face was piquantly alert, with long-lashed eyes of a
peculiar green, a small nose, the least bit raised, a lifted chin, and
an abundance of yellowish hair. But it was the expertness of her
gowning that really held my attention at that first view, and the fact
that she knew what to put on her head. For the most part, the ladies I
had met were well enough gotten up yet looked curiously all wrong,
lacking a genius for harmony of detail.
This person, I repeat, displayed a taste that was faultless, a
knowledge of the peculiar needs of her face and figure that was
unimpeachable. Rather with regret it was I found her to be a Mrs.
Kenner, the leader of the Bohemian set.
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