in glory cluster through a perfect womanhood!

FOR AND AGAINST.

When his father called Fred Fontevrault, then a boy of fifteen, into his
sick chamber, and made him subscribe to the whimsical conditions of the
will, the female _gendarmerie_, so well versed in my affairs, declared
that my husband had wretchedly repented his early marriage, and
resolving his son should walk into fate with eyes unbandaged, forbade
his alliance before the age of twenty-six. Though Mr. Fontevrault was
fifty and I sixteen when I married him, he was not unhappy. He occupied
himself in looking after his money, and making a collection of mosaics.
We never had any matrimonial disturbances. I think they are vulgar. Any
woman can do as she pleases without a remonstrant word, provided she has
mind enough. It is the brainless women who scold. But scolds do not
rule.

Fred was unreasonably fond of his father, and assented to his wishes
without demur, even when the great Fontevrault estates hung on his
fidelity to a useless oath. Then he died, and I settled into the blank
stupidity of my widowhood. I, who had known no master but my own sweet
will, now found myself in a hundred ways restricted. I was ruled through
Fred. He must graduate at Harvard; the great establishment, splendid but
tedious, must be maintained. So our residence in Boston was
necessitated. I shut myself up in the legitimate manner, and--mourned of
course. If it had not been for novels, worsted work, and my beauty, I
should have gaped myself out of existence the first year. What nonsense
it is to say the prime of a woman's loveliness passes before the
thirties! For, look at me, am I old or faded? Would you believe that
Fred, so tall and splendidly developed, was my son? From me he took his
wealth of nature, for Mr. Fontevrault was one of those dried, wrinkled
old men, women like me often marry; not because of the settlements only,
but because of the foil. My figure was moulded like the Venus they
copied in the colder marble from Pauline. Shoulders and arms, delicious
in their curves, shining with a rosy fairness. A creamy skin, with a
faint coralline tinge in the cheeks. The forehead is too low, some say;
and yet artists have praised its bend, and the Greek line of the nose;
not intellectual, but womanly, you know. Hair of a bright brown, feeling
like floss silk. Eyes, I believe, few people ever fairly saw. Men are
bewitched by them, women cannot understand their charm. Perha