not one in whose presence Dinah was conscious of the
excitement caused by personal beauty, by a belief in promised happiness,
by the impact of a superior soul, or the anticipation of a love affair,
even an unhappy one.

Thus none of Dinah's choicest faculties had a chance of developing;
she swallowed many insults to her pride, which was constantly suffering
under the husband who so calmly walked the stage as supernumerary in the
drama of her life. Compelled to bury her wealth of love, she showed only
the surface to the world. Now and then she would try to rouse herself,
try to form some manly resolution; but she was kept in leading strings
by the need for money. And so, slowly and in spite of the ambitious
protests and grievous recriminations of her own mind, she underwent
the provincial metamorphosis here described. Each day took with it a
fragment of her spirited determination. She had laid down a rule for the
care of her person, which she gradually departed from. Though at first
she kept up with the fashions and the little novelties of elegant life,
she was obliged to limit her purchases by the amount of her allowance.
Instead of six hats, caps, or gowns, she resigned herself to one gown
each season. She was so much admired in a certain bonnet that she made
it do duty for two seasons. So it was in everything.

Not unfrequently her artistic sense led her to sacrifice the
requirements of her person to secure some bit of Gothic furniture. By
the seventh year she had come so low as to think it convenient to
have her morning dresses made at home by the best needlewoman in the
neighborhood; and her mother, her husband, and her friends pronounced
her charming in these inexpensive costumes which did credit to her
taste. Her ideas were imitated! As she had no standard of comparison,
Dinah fell into the snares that surround the provincial woman. If a
Parisian woman's hips are too narrow or too full, her inventive wit and
the desire to please help to find some heroic remedy; if she has some
defect, some ugly spot, or small disfigurement, she is capable of making
it an adornment; this is often seen; but the provincial woman--never! If
her waist is too short and her figure ill balanced, well, she makes up
her mind to the worst, and her adorers--or they do not adore her--must
take her as she is, while the Parisian always insists on being taken for
what she is not. Hence the preposterous bustles, the audacious flatness,
the ridic