"Why does any one envy me the charms I possess?
"Ah, me!" she cried, looking at herself in the mirror with her hands
poised in the attitude of a Caryatid. "It is all I have. Happiness I
shall never know; but one thing I do know--that I will laugh, dance
and sing and have a merry life while I am young, and then when my
charms have fled to a younger form I will bury myself in some remote
convent and try to make atonement for my gay and worldly life."
It were strange, indeed, that Mrs. Arnold had this sense of wrong.
She did, indeed, realize that her actions were not what any sensible
woman would justify, yet she took refuge in the thought that when
she grew old there was time enough for discretion.
Another trait of her disposition: It grieved her to see others
happy. Like the arch fiend who turned aside with envy when he beheld
the happy pair in the Garden of Eden and from that hour plotted
their ruin, so Mrs. Arnold from, sheer envy was determined that the
innocent and pure-minded Marguerite should be associated with the
coarse side of humanity--in short, that she should become familiar
with the fashionable miseries of a fashionable woman.
But Mrs.
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