She was a most magnificent looking woman, as she sat within her richly furnished room on that warm September night, now gazing idly dawn the street and again bending her head to catch the first sound of footsteps on the stairs. Personal preservation¹ had been the great study of her life, and forty years had not dimmed the luster² of her soft, black eyes, or woven one thread of silver among the luxuriant curls which clustered in such profusion³ around her face and neck. Gray hairs and Maude Glendower had nothing in common, and the fair, round cheek, the pearly teeth, the youthful bloom, and white, uncovered shoulders seemed to indicate that time had made an exception in her favor, and dropped her from its wheel.

 

With a portion of her history the reader is already acquainted. Early orphaned⁴, she was thrown upon the care of an old aunt who, proud of her wondrous⁵ beauty, spared no pains to make her what nature seemed to will that she should be, a coquette and a belle⁶. At seventeen we find her a schoolgirl in New Haven⁷, where she turned the heads of all the college boys, and then murmured because one, a dark-eyed youth of twenty, withheld⁸ from her the homage⁹ she claimed as her just due. In a fit of pique¹⁰ she besieged¹¹ a staid, handsome young M.D. of twenty-seven, who had just commenced to practice in the city, and who, proudly keeping himself

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