not think her a fine woman?"

"Yes, certainly, a fine woman. She was once, I am told, very
beautiful."

"Once? is she not so now?" he asked. "Well, I have heard the same
before. I sometimes think I should like to see her now, now that the
mildew of years and perhaps of accusing recollections are upon her; and
see her toss her gray curls as she used to do her dark ones, and act
over again her old stratagem of smiles upon a face of wrinkles. Just
Heavens! were I revengeful to the full extent of my wrongs, I could wish
her no worse punishment.

"They told you truly, my dear sir,--she was beautiful, nay, externally,
faultless. Her figure was that of womanhood, just touching upon the
meridian of perfection, from which nothing could be taken, and to which
nothing could be added. There was a very witchery in her smile,
trembling, as it did, over her fine Grecian features, like the play of
moonlight upon a shifting and beautiful cloud.

"Her voice was music, low, sweet, bewildering. I have heard it a
thousand times in my dreams. It floated around me, like the tones of
some rare instrument, unseen by the hearer; for, beautiful as she was,
you could not think of her, or of her loveliness, while she was
speaking; it was that sweetly wonderful voice, seemingly abstracted from
herself, pouring forth the soft current of its exquisite cadence, which
alone absorbed the attention. Like that one of Coleridge's heroines,
you could half feel, half fancy, that it had a separate being of its
own, a spiritual presence manifested to but one of the senses; a living
something, whose mode of existence was for the ear alone.--(See Memoirs
of Maria Eleonora Schoning.)

"But what shall I say of the mind? What of the spirit, the resident
divinity of so fair a temple? Vanity, vanity, all was vanity;
a miserable, personal vanity, too, unrelieved by one noble aspiration,
one generous feeling; the whited sepulchre spoken of of old, beautiful
without, but dark and unseemly within.

"I look back with wonder and astonishment to that period of my life,
when such a being claimed and received the entire devotion of my heart.
Her idea blended with or predominated over all others. It was the
common centre in my mind from which all the radii of thought had their
direction; the nucleus around which I had gathered all that my ardent
imagination could conceive, or a memory stored with all the delicious
dreams of poetry and romances could embody,