A New Aristocracy

Margaret Murchison, the eldest of the three children, was too strongly built, physically and mentally, to be beautiful. It is indisputably true that where nature puts strength she also puts hard lines, and every feature of Margaret’s face bespoke the positive nature; quick to comprehend and fearless to execute. Yet hers was by no means a masculine or an ugly face. Though strongly marked, there was still an indefinable attraction in the warm depths of her blue eyes and the smile of her mobile and sympathetic mouth. She was, withal, strangely wholesome to look upon; one of those rare beings, as it came afterward to be said of her, whose faces rest you as calm waters and green fields rest eyes that are blinded with the dust and turmoil of the city’s streets. In figure she was tall, with that breadth of shoulder and hip which indicates endurance, free and graceful in her movements, apt in her utterances, and unusually keen in her intuitions. At the time of her father’s death she was twenty-four years of age, thoughtful even beyond her years. Hers had been a hard school.