This was before the advent of tailor-made figures; yet there was a sort of prophetic tailor’s finish in her severe yachting dress and professional cloth cap. Her hair was arranged in that neat mathematical formula which no woman, however talented, can produce by her own unaided fingers. Only a lady’s maid, and a very clever one at that, could have turned out those whitey-brown braids and puffs in such polished completeness on board ship. She looked rather contemptuously through her eyeglass at the only passenger from St. Paul’s, a young lady who was just then coming on board, and mounting the steps as if she were being led to execution; and, indeed, it was evident to the unaided vision that everything about the new-comer was in the wrong, passively if not actively wrong. Her thin, shiny black silk at once declared the fact of having seen better days, but it need not have been decked out with cheap fringe and unfortunate ornaments. The feathers in her hat were weak and drooping, as if they had been curled and recurled with great care and trouble, but could not keep it up a moment longer. On one arm she carried a worn but excellent shawl of real cashmere, which might have covered a multitude of sins, but that some evil genius had sewn on a garnishing of imitation ermine, which
