The woman with the feather in her hair

If you ever go to a department store breakfast reception, eat first. Do it or you'll spend the morning balancing cups and saucers and lukewarm mini-quiches (that you don't really want anyway) and attempting to gracefully ingest cantaloupe while you mingle amid the mid-priced handbags. You'll inevitably end up not eating what's on your plate and will eventually find yourself glancing furtively around to see if any of the minglers have noticed that you just left a plate of half-crumbled danishes next to the Liz Claiborne tote bags display.

If you ever do attend such a gathering, arrive late to avoid all of the above and feign a need for the restroom in order to wander the store's empty aisles. There you might have the luck to encounter someone such as Miss Jane Sibley, whom you'll recognize by the feather in her hair.

Miss Jane's feather is fitting, since she herself is tiny and birdlike. She's one of the breed of Texas women that captures the imagination - strong, feminine creatures who demur to the males around them but wield far-reaching and subtle power behind their honeyed manners. There's a spark of feistiness to these women that draws me to them.

On this morning, Miss Jane was polite as ever, just as she had been the other time I met her - at a party where we discussed books about Texas. She remembered me, or said she did, and introduced me to a young Latino man who was kind of her assistant. After a few minutes of conversation she excused herself. "We're going to a preview of the Long Center," she explained, and then we talked briefly about how 2008 (when it would open) was not so far away. Then she was gone, leaving me standing in the juniors dresses aisle, wondering what it was I admired about her so.

Some Texan women deserve their own version of the French phrase "Je ne sais (pas) quoi." From now on, when I meet somebody like this, I'll just describe her by saying, she's got that certain, je ne sais pas, y'all.