Upon their return she was herself to be married . `` I had never seen Miriam before . Her arrival was unexpected , and I was absent from home when she came . I returned in the evening , and when I saw her first she was standing under the chandelier in the drawing room . Talk about spirits ! For five seconds I thought I had seen one . `` Miriam was a beauty . I had known that before , though I think I hardly expected to see such wonderful loveliness . She was tall and extremely graceful , dark -- at least her hair was dark , but her skin was wonderfully fair and clear . Her hair was gathered away from her face , and she had a high , pure , white forehead , and the straightest , finest , blackest brows . Her face was oval , with very large and dark eyes . `` I soon realized that Miriam was in some mysterious fashion different from other people . I think everyone who met her felt the same way . Yet it was a feeling hard to define . For my own part I simply felt as if she belonged to another world , and that part of the time she -- her soul , you know -- was back there again . `` You must not suppose that Miriam was a disagreeable person to have in the house . On the contrary , it was the very reverse . Everybody liked her . She was one of the sweetest , most winsome girls I ever knew , and I soon grew to love her dearly . As for what Dick called her ` little queernesses ' -- well , we got used to them in time .
`` XXXXX was engaged , as I have told you , to a young Harvard man named Sidney Claxton .
Dick Everybody Miriam chandelier evening first home people queernesses seconds