The Adventures of a Widow

e suggestive of bad than of good tidings; her old acquaintances, male and female, flocked to the Bond Street house with a most loyal promptitude. The ladies came in glossy coupés and dignif

rizzled bridegroom winning the young, loveless, but acquiescent bride bears a historic stamp; we recall, perhaps, that they have always believed in that kind of savagery over there; it is as old as their weird turrets and their grim torture-chambers. But with ourselves, who broke loose, in theory at least, from a good many tough bigotries, the sacredness of the marriage state presents a much more meagre excuse for violation. It was not that the husbands of Pauline's wedded friends were in any remembered instance grizzled, however; they were indeed

to pay out such a small bit of line in order to sound them; one's plummet so soon struck bottom, as it were. She found herself silently marvelling at the serenity of their content

cted admiration of her beauty or of their pleasure in her company won for them the grace of a pardoning afterthought. They were still bachelors, and some of them more maturely handsome bachelors than

y found them. This was one of the necessities of her conversion; they must not prove agreeable any longer; it was inconsequent, untenable, that they should receive from her anything but a merely hypocritic courtesy. She wanted her contempt for the class of which they were members to be in ever

, when they called. But I cannot understand how they can possibly like me as they no do

s inimitable repose, "I will assure them of t

d never asked her to marry him, and yet it had been plain to her that under favoring conditions he might have made her this proposal. She was nearly certain that he no longer regarded her with a trace of the fo

peace" might gleam now and then through its enskirting boskage, but that should be all. Pauline had read and studied with a good deal of fidelity, both during her marriage and after her widowhood. She had gone into the acquisition of knowledge and the development of thought as some women go into the intoxication of a nervine. Her methods had been amateurish and desultory; she had not been taught, she had learned, and hence learned ill. "The modern thinkers," as she called them, delighted her with their liberality, their iconoclasm. She was in just that receptive mood to be made an extremist by their doctrines, the best of which so sensibly warn us against extremes. Her husband's memory, for

These points of attraction were mostly superficialities, it is true, like the fashion of clothes or the conventionalism of accepted social customs. But even these she had more than half persuaded herself that she despised, and when she observed them in others they too often blinded her to attractions of a less flim

of contour, despite their size; his grace of movement was extraordinary, considering his height and weight; the noble girth and solidity of chest struck you as you stood close to him-men found it so substantially, women so protectively, human. A kind of warmth seemed to diffuse itself from his bodily nearness, as if the pulse of his blood must be on some exceptionally liberal scale. But for those whom he really fascinated his real fascinations lay elsewhere. You met them in the pair of facile dimples that

trymen might have said, but it was very choice and true English, nevertheless. Well as he spoke it, he spoke it immoderately, even exorbitantly, when the mood was upon him, and the mood was upon him, in a loquacious sense, with considerable pertinacity. He was the so

ad suddenly found himself thrown on the world, through the death of his patron. After that he had revisited his somewhat distant home for a brief term, and soon afterward had taken passage for America, aided by the funds of an admiring kinsman. He had even then developed evidence of what we call a knack for writing. After severe hardships on these shores, he had drifted into an editorial office in the capacity of printer. This had been a godsend to him, and it had fallen from the skies of Chicago, not New York. But New York had ultimately proved the theatre of those triumphs which were brilliant indeed compared with the humd

graphic agent. He never forgot a face, a book, a conversation. He hardly forgot a single one of his newspaper articles, and their name was legion. His powers just stopped short of genius, but they distinctly stopped there. He did many things well-many things, in truth, which for a man so hazardously educated it was surprising that he did at all. But he did nothing superlatively well. It was the old story of that fatal facility possessed by numbers of his own countrymen who hav

nd Kindelon had soon re-met. He bore the change from oceanic surroundings admirably in Pauline's eyes. With characteristic candor he told her that he had come back from the recent visit to his old parents in Ireland (Pauline knowing all about this visit, of course) to find himself wofully poor. She was wondering whether he would resent the offer of a loan if she made him one, when he suddenly surprised her by a state

nt brought them more closely together for many days than they would otherwise have been. His artistic feeling and his excellent

in a loose, haphazard way. We newspaper men can't escape general informa

these other people to whom I shall so

yes. "They're a good deal cleverer-some of them," he replied. "

very anxious

ntroductions indefinitely," he responded. He spoke with sudden seriousness

s quiet as usual, and the Irishman perhaps rather unwontedly voluble. Pauline thought she had never heard her new fr

a wonder

ated Courtlandt,

No other word just expresses him. I didn't observe you very closely, Court," she went on, "bu

yet. He makes me think of one of those factories where there's a violent h

usly unjust criticism!" she exclaimed. "Do you mean to tell me, un

," said h

hat I should never even be surprised by you. But you need not pretend

A Bohemian chap, you know. They're nearly all of them just like that.

at effort, as far as you were concerned!" de

a result next to impossible. But she was now so annoyed by her cousin's slighting comment

find Pauline changed, but by no means changed in her present way. On hearing her niece express certain very downright opinions wi

ou cannot possibly mean that you in

thia? I don't quite cat

-not, indeed, until Sallie had grown up and was ready to come out. There is no objection, surely, against closing one's doors upon the world, provided o

is further from my wish than to close my doors upon the wor

with no doubts; she had, in her way, settled the universe. All her creeds were crystallized, and each, metaphorically, was kept in cotton, as though it were a sort of family diamond. She had been a Miss Schenectady, of the elder, wealthy and more conspicuous branch; it was a most notable thing to have been such a Miss Schenectady. She had married a millionaire, and also a Poughkeepsie; this, moreover, was something very i

pinion was of the best, and doubtless in the opinion of a good many of her adherents also. From the necklace of ancestral brilliants which she now wore, sparkling at ball or dinner, on her generous and creamy neck, to

d vital purity of a sweet maidenhood to a man weighted with years and almost decrepid from past excesses. But that she should see

you have no remedy for it except to refrain from all entertaining and all acceptance of courtesies. But I beg, Pauline, that you will hesitate before you store up for yourself the material of ugly future repentance. Sallie and I have accepted the Effinghams' box at the opera to-night. Those poor Effinghams have been stricken by the death of their father; it was so sudden-he was sitting in his library and literally fell dead-he must certainly have left two millions, but of course that has

onistic in costume, sorry in voice, and mournfully undrilled. But the diva was so comprehensively talented that she carried the whole performance. At the same time there were those among her hearers who lamented that her transcendent ability should be burlesqued by so shabby and impotent a surrounding. The engagement of this famous lady was m

, with her mother's nose, her mother's serenity, her mother's promise of corpulent matronhood. She had immense prospects; it was reporte

dered that it had done so when she subsequently bent a closer gaze upon the receding forehead, flaccid mouth and lank frame of the Earl himself. He had certainly as much hard prose about his appearance as poetry in his name. Mrs. Poughkeepsie beamed upon him in a sort of sidelong way all the time that he conversed with Sallie. A magnate of b

rible about a state of human worldliness which could thus idolize mere rank and place. She knew well enough that so long as Lord Glenartney wer

ain again fell he still remained, while other gentlemen took the places of those

e handsome massive-framed Irishman was not clad in evening dress. He towered above all the other gentlemen; he seemed, as indeed he almost was, like a creature of another species. His advent made an instant sensation; a universal stare was levelled upon him by these sleek devotees of fashion, among whom he had the air of pushing his way with a p

whisper in the ear of her niece. There was an absolutely dramati

er aunt as she responded: "A

psie. The fragmentary little vocative

ad found a chair. He pl

ke in quite loud tones, while everybody listened. Her words had t

ht, "to snobbery and conservatism. This sl

looked towards Mrs. Poughkeepsie, without a trace of awe in his mirthful expression. "You must pardon my gallantry, madam," he proceeded. "Your niece and I, though recent friends, are yet old ones. We ha

ughkeepsie, with a smile that