What could she do now but think over her past life—­a life that had given her no children—­a life that had been filled neither by peace nor good-will?  She had married an old man for his money; had worried him out of his life, and he had gone and left her childless.  She would not charge herself with the crime of hastening to the grave her father and mother, but she knew she had not been a comfort to them.  Her willfulness; her love of money and of power; her pride of person and accomplishments; her desire for admiration; her violent passions, had made her a torment to others and to herself.  She knew that no one loved her for anything good that she possessed, and knew that her own heart was barren of love for others.  She felt that a little child who would call her “mother,” clinging to her hand, or nestling in her bosom, could redeem her to her better self; and how could she help thinking of the true men who, with their hearts in their fresh, manly hands, had prayed for her love in the dawn of her young beauty, and been spurned from her presence—­men now in the honorable walks of life with their little ones around them?  Her relatives had forsaken her.  There was absolutely no one to whom she could turn for the sympathy which in that hour she craved.

In these reflections, there was one person of her own blood recalled to whom she had been a curse, and of whom, for a single moment, she could not bear to think.  She had driven him from her presence—­the one who, through all her childhood, had been her companion, her admirer, her loyal follower.  He had dared to love and marry one whom she did not approve, and she had angrily banished him from her side.  If she only had him to love, she felt that she should be better and happier, but she had no hope that he would ever return to her.

She felt now, with inexpressible loathing, the unworthiness of the charms with which she fascinated the base men around her.  The only sympathy she had was from these, and the only power she possessed was over them, and through them.  The aim of her life was to fascinate them; the art of her life was to keep them fascinated without the conscious degradation of herself, and, so, to lead them whithersoever she would.  Her business was the manufacture of slaves—­slaves to her personal charms and her imperious will.  Each slave carried around his own secret, treated her with distant deference in society, spoke of her with respect, and congratulated himself on possessing her supreme favor.  Not one of them had her heart, or her confidence.  With a true woman’s instinct, she knew that no man who would be untrue to his wife would be true to her.  So she played with them as with puppies that might gambol around her, and fawn before her, but might not smutch her robes with their dirty feet, or get the opportunity to bite her hand.