seemed to the under-vitalized spinster as in themselves
a kind of offence against propriety,) the forlorn woman
folded her thin hands and looked on hopelessly, hardly
venturing a remonstrance for fear of some new explosion.
As for Cynthia, she was comparatively easy since
she had, through Mr. Byles Gridley, upset the minister’s
questionable arrangement of religious intimacy.
She had, in fact, in a quiet way, given Mr. Bradshaw
to understand that he would probably meet Myrtle at
the Parsonage if he dropped in at their small gathering.
Clement walked over to Mrs. Hopkins’s after his
dinner with the young lawyer, and asked if Susan was
ready to go with him. At the sound of his voice,
Gifted Hopkins smote his forehead, and called himself,
in subdued tones, a miserable being. His imagination
wavered uncertain for a while between pictures of
various modes of ridding himself of existence, and
fearful deeds involving the life of others. He
had no fell purpose of actually doing either, but
there was a gloomy pleasure in contemplating them
as possibilities, and in mentally sketching the “Lines
written in Despair” which would be found in
what was but an hour before the pocket of the youthful
bard, G. H., victim of a hopeless passion. All
this emotion was in the nature of a surprise to the
young man. He had fully believed himself desperately
in love with Myrtle Hazard; and it was not until Clement
came into the family circle with the right of eminent
domain over the realm of Susan’s affections,
that this unfortunate discovered that Susan’s
pretty ways and morning dress and love of poetry and
liking for his company had been too much for him, and
that he was henceforth to be wretched during the remainder
of his natural life, except so far as he could unburden
himself in song.
Mr. William Murray Bradshaw had asked the privilege
of waiting upon Myrtle to the little party at the
Eveleths. Myrtle was not insensible to the attractions
of the young lawyer, though she had never thought of
herself except as a child in her relations with any
of these older persons. But she was not the
same girl that she had been but a few months before.
She had achieved her independence by her audacious
and most dangerous enterprise. She had gone
through strange nervous trials and spiritual experiences
which had matured her more rapidly than years of common
life would have done. She had got back her health,
bringing with it a riper wealth of womanhood.
She had found her destiny in the consciousness that
she inherited the beauty belonging to her blood, and
which, after sleeping for a generation or two as if
to rest from the glare of the pageant that follows
beauty through its long career of triumph, had come
to the light again in her life, and was to repeat the
legends of the olden time in her own history.