little note of graceful timidity,
not perhaps noticeable in itself, but in contrast with that unmistakable
air of confidence which a woman married always has, and which in the
unrefined becomes assertive, an exaggerated notion of her importance, of
the value added to her opinions by the act of marriage. You can see it
in her air the moment she walks away from the altar, keeping step to
Mendelssohn's tune. Jack Sharpley says that she always seems to be
saying, "Well, I've done it once for all." This assumption of the
married must be one of the hardest things for single women to bear in
their self-congratulating sisters.

I have no doubt that Georgiana Forsythe was a charming girl, spirited
and handsome; for the beauty of her years, almost pathetic in its
dignity and self-renunciation, could not have followed mere prettiness
or a commonplace experience. What that had been I never inquired, but it
had not soured her. She was not communicative nor confidential, I fancy,
with any one, but she was always friendly and sympathetic to the trouble
of others, and helpful in an undemonstrative way. If she herself had
a secret feeling that her life was a failure, it never impressed
her friends so, it was so even, and full of good offices and quiet
enjoyment. Heaven only knows, however, the pathos of this apparently
undisturbed life. For did a woman ever live who would not give all the
years of tasteless serenity, for one year, for one month, for one hour,
of the uncalculating delirium of love poured out upon a man who returned
it? It may be better for the world that there are these women to whom
life has still some mysteries, who are capable of illusions and the
sweet sentimentality that grows out of a romance unrealized.

Although the recent books were on Miss Forsythe's table, her tastes and
culture were of the past age. She admired Emerson and Tennyson. One may
keep current with the news of the world without changing his principles.
I imagine that Miss Forsythe read without injury to herself the
passionate and the pantheistic novels of the young women who have come
forward in these days of emancipation to teach their grandmothers a new
basis of morality, and to render meaningless all the consoling epitaphs
on the mossy New England gravestones. She read Emerson for his
sweet spirit, for his belief in love and friendship, her simple
Congregationalist faith remaining undisturbed by his philosophy, from
which she took only a habit