Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/327

 No chairmen laid their burdens down before our doors. If I took a short excursion in the park, the most intimate of my acquaintances either saw me not, or, seeing me, bowed stiffly and passed on in a studied silence. In particular my kind women friends appeared to derive a sincere happiness from what they pleased to call my downfall. The scornful gladness of their looks was wonderful, and yet also terrible; for alas! what could be the condition of the stony hearts from which they did proceed? Then it was that I remembered how short a time ago I was one of these contemptibles.

"Emblem," says I, on the execution eve, with hope born apparently of misery's excesses, "I have done with town and the Court, and all this ridiculous world of fashion. They are very barbarous affairs! When I wed my Anthony I will be the pattern of an attentive spouse. I will be his cheerful slave and his most devoted friend. But I'll not forego ambition neither. I will train and educate him until he doth become a veritable power in the realm. For I mean to be the wife of my Lord Secretary Dare, and then, my Emblem, I'll turn all these dear women friends of mine just green with jealousy. Yet, in my pride, I will not trample on them, as they trample now on me, but will deal with 'em graciously, and ask 'em to my routs among the ambassadors and potentates, and prove thereby that I am not a cherisher of malice, but a creature of a gentler temper than themselves."

Yet here, having indulged these harmless specu