The Adventures of a Widow

Christendom, it is scarcely worth being recorded. The whole important constituency of her kindred were graciously pleased at the match, with a single exception. This was Courtlandt Beekman, who

e the old lady's gratified quiver while her thin hand was gallantly imprinted, as well, by the kiss of her new son-in-law. She had surely reached the goal of all her earthly hopes. She had a silken chair to rock in, and a maid as her special attendant, and a doctor to be as devoted and exorbitant as he chose. Her neuralgia, her asthma, her rheumatism, her thousand and o

al, and roused her resentment. He was a good deal more brutal, in a glacial, exasperating way, as Pauline's anger manifested itself. B

g those who saw Pauline off in the steamer. He looked, while taking her hand in farewell, as if he felt very sorry for her. Pauline seemed in excellent spirits; her black dress became her; she was so blonde that you saw th

ans pleased their recipients. She appeared to tell nothing about herself; she was always writing of the city. As if one couldn't read of the Tuileries and N?tre Dame in a thousand books! As if one hadn't been there oneself! Why did she not write how they were getting on together? That was the one imperative stimulus for curiosity among all Pauline's friends and kindred-how they were getting on to

once rather effusively said to Courtlandt. "Now that Hamilton Varick is well, he might be larking

ourtlandt had responded, laconic

national incentives for gossip, the unsatisfactory tone of her letters. Once, however, Paulin

Well, she deserves it for marrying a vieux galant like that! Poor Pauline! With her looks she might have married somebody of respectable age. But

donable scorn. This auditor was Courtlandt; and he remembered how the same compa

ty as ever, but living quite retired. It was said she had taken to books and general mental improvement. No one ever saw her with her husband. She never alluded to

rls and the Snowe girls had married more or less loftily, and had proved to the Amsterdams and others that they were worthy of peaceable affiliation. "Poor Pauline Varick" began to be a phrase,

ive queries respecting his death, or his deportment during the foreign sojourn that preceded his death, were now quite out of order. She had buried him, as she had married him, decently and legally. He slept in Père la Chaise, by his own ante mortem request. No matter what sort of a life he had led her; it was nobody's business. She returned home, two years later, to take a high place and hold a high

all blending to produce so high-bred and refined an expression, rarely broke into a smile now, but some unexplained fascination lay in its acquired seriousness, that made the smile of brighter quality and deeper import when it really came. She wore her copious and shining hair in a heavy knot behind, and let it ripple naturally toward ei

ure it for some time longer if that immense tailor-shop had not gone up there at the Broadway corner, where such a lovely, drowsy old mansion used to stand. Yes, I must let myself be compliantly sw

currency," said Courtlandt, with one of hi

French way. "I have forgotten very l

to get back

o take a new view of

w pair of eye

stly for a moment. "Tell me, Court," she went

ng his legs. "Oh," he said, "no

Do you remember how they used to say you would m

now. Young men are being graduated from college, young girls from seminaries.

s seemed to follow and enjoy them, had re-addressed her like a familiar though alienated friend. "You recollect perfectly how Aunt Cynthia Poughkeepsie used to lift that Roman nose of hers and declar

lly made use of her, and of a good many revived leaders like her, besides. Most of the good men like them; that was their strong point. It was all very well to say they hadn't had ancestors who knew Canal Street when it was a canal, and shot deer on Twenty-Third Street; but that wouldn't do

t marry one of

gh. "I'm under the impression, Pa

t a button on the front of her black dress. "It's only four years, and yet I fancy it to be a ce

y. "I don't know that the

hen she gave Lily a Delmonico Blue-Room party (do they have Delmonico Blue-Room parties, now?), instructed old Grace Church Brown to challenge at the Fourteenth Street entrance (where

urned Courtlan

Schenectadys, when suddenly the corpulent sentinel, Brown, desired from her escort the mysterious card, and finding it not to be forthcoming sent a messenger upstairs? And how Mr. Schenectady presently appeared and

y uncivil. You'll find society very much changed, if you go out. You'll see people whose names you never heard before. I sometimes thi

nd myself, and never exchange another word on the subject. You were perfectly right; the thing I did was horrible, and I've bought my yards of sackcloth, my bushels of ashes. If it were to do over again, I'd rather beg, starve, die in the very gutter. There's no exaggeration, here; I have grown to look on this human destiny of ours with such utterly changed vision-I've so broadened in a mental and moral sense, that my very identity of the past seems as if it were something I'd moulted, like the old feathers of a bird. Feathers make a happy simile; I was lighter than a feather, then-as light as thistledown. I had no principles; I merely had caprices. I had no opinions of my own; other people's were handed to me and I blindly accepted them. My chief vice, which was vanity, I mistook for the virtue of self-respect, and kept it carefully polished, like a little pocket-mirror to look at one's face in. I was goaded by an actually sordi

. He was observing her with an excessive keenness of scrutiny, now, underneath his reposeful demeanor. But he aired none of his contradictory beliefs. It is possible that he had never had a downright argument with any fellow-creature in his life. So

ithout lifting her gaze. "Yes," she went on, "the reformatory impulse must have been latent all that time. I can

nders it is goin

med, looking up at him with a s

so," h

l laugh at me. I expect a certain amount of ridicule. But I shall despise it so heartily that it will not make me swerve a single inch. I intend

of what

hey can be as poor as church mice, as unsuccessful as talent nearly always is, as quaint in manner as genius incessantly shows itself." Here Pauline rose, and made a few eloquent little gestures with both hands, while she moved about the room in a way that suggested the host

out the vestige of a smile, "that you mean

satire. But his sedate mien appeared to reassure he

ot invite them

a passport of admission. My apartments are to be at once easy and difficult of entrance. I shall not object to the so-called aristocratic class, although if any applicant shall solicit my notice who is undoubtedly a member

ld not have made it more so. All ladies and

visiting upon him more wrathful reprimand. At the same time she said: "It's a subject, Court, on which I am unprepared for trivial levity

gh. "If I seem disrespectful yo

ed him with a commiseration that he thought delicious; it was so palpably genuine; sh

the fellows you propose to have; they wear long hair, quite often, and big cloaks instead of top-c

long in the same old ruts that humanity has worn deep for centuries. Of course you never had, and never will have, the least spark of enthusiasm. You're naturally lethargic; if a person stuck a pin into you I don't believe you would jump. But all this is no reason why you shouldn't try and live up to the splendid advancements of your age. When my constituents are g

rtlandt imperturbably. "I supposed your doors

n upon us very often. I shall need your presence

told me that I was benighted. No

sical folk perceive what a vast deal they are deprived of. Besides, I should like you to be my

ooden. No doubt you feel that you have made a wise selection o

is not to

r, in this renewal of their old half-cousinly and half-flirtatious intimacy. She was thinking what deeps of characteristic drollery slept in him-with what a quiet, funny sort of martyrdom he had borne her little girlish despotisms, before

ow said, "where all these extraord

she said, with a solemn inclination-or at least

or mummies that you were going to get together for a museum

you will fi

y to be

t will not b

y're domest

of Europe-I am very certain of finding them." She paused for a moment, and seemed to employ a tacit inte

stener. He drew a long breath. "Ah! now we get at the root of

style. Especially as, in the first place, you have never met him

my asking his name? Or is

ear cousin," she exclaimed, "how absurd you can be at a pinch! Wh

body you met

on the steamer,

An Eng

of years. He knows a great many of the intellectual people here. He

ruffly, not at all liking the present drift of the information.