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The pursuer is referred to in the journal as “she” and “her.” But Jack Burden learned the name. “She” was Annabelle Trice, Mrs. Duncan Trice, and Mr. Duncan Trice was a prosperous young banker of Lexington, Kentucky, who was an intimate of Cass Mastern and apparently one of those who led him into the paths of pleasure. Jack Burden learned the name by going back to the files of the Lexington newspapers for the middle 1850’s to locate the story of a death. It was the death of Mr. Duncan Trice. In the newspaper it was reported as an accident. Duncan Trice had shot himself by accident, the newspaper said, while cleaning a pair of pistols. One of the pistols, already cleaned, lay on the couch where he had been sitting, in his library, at the time of the accident. The other, the lethal instrument, had fallen to the floor. Jack Burden had known, from the journal, the nature of the case, and so when he had located the special circumstances, he had learned the identity of “she.” Mr. Trice, the newspaper said, was survived by his widow, nee Annabelle Puckett, of Washington, D.C.

Shortly after Cass had come to Lexington, Annabelle Trice met him. Duncan Trice brought him home, for he had received a letter from Mr. Davis, recommending the brother of his good friend and neighbor, Mr. Gilbert Mastern. (Duncan Trice had come to Lexington from southern Kentucky, where his own father had been a friend of Samuel Davis, the father of Jefferson, when Samuel lived at Fairview and bred racers.) So Duncan Trice brought the tall boy home, who was no longer a hobbledehoy, and set him on a sofa and thrust a glass into his hand and called in his pretty, husky-voiced wife, of whom he was proud, to greet the stranger. “When she first enter the room, in which the shades of approaching twilight were gathering thought he hour for the candles to be lit had scarcely come, I thought that her eyes were black, and the effect was most striking, her hair being of such fairness. I noticed, too, how softly she trod and with a gliding motion which, though she was perhaps of a little less than moderate stature, gave an impression of regal dignity–

et avertens rosea cervice refulsit

Ambrosiaeque comae divinum vertice odorem

Spiravere, pedes vestis defluxit ad imos,

Et vera incessu patuit Dea.

So the Mantuan said, when Venus appeared and the true goddess was revealed by her gait. She came into the room and was the true goddess as revealed in her movement, and was, but for Divine Grace (if such be granted to a parcel of corruption such as I), my true damnation. She gave me her hand and spoke with a tingling huskiness which made me think of rubbing my hand upon a soft deep-piled cloth, like velvet, or upon a fur. It would not have been called a musical voice such as is generally admired. I know that, but I can only set down what effect it worked upon my own organs of hearing.”

Cass set down a very conscientious description of every feature and proportion, a kind of tortured inventory, as though in the midst of the “darkness and trouble,” at the very moment of his agony and repudiation, he had to take one last backward look even at the risk of being turned into a pillar of salt. “Her face was not large tough a little given to fullness. Her mouth was strong but the lips were red and moist and seemed to be slightly parted or about to part themselves. The chin was short and firmly molded. Her skin was of a great whiteness, it seemed then before the candles were lit, but afterward I was to see what it had a bloom of color upon it. Her hair, which was in a remarkable abundance and of great fairness, was drawn back from her face and worn in large coils low down to the neck. Her waist was very small and her breasts, which seemed naturally high and round and full, were the higher for the corseting. Her dress, of a dark blue silk I remember, was cut low to the very downward curve of the shoulders, and in the front showed how the breasts were lifted like twin orbs.”

Cass