Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/157



FEEL that I am growing old for want of somebody to tell me that I am looking as young as ever. Charming falsehood! There is a vast deal of vital air in loving words." This was the passage that Millicent Beauregard read from Landor. Her eyes wandered off the volume, and a troubled look stole over their Juno-like irids. Her delicate, white hand was pressed upon the open page, and the faintest contraction, the merest soupçon of a frown shadowed her ample brow. Some chord of sympathy with the writer was touched, and its vibration started a train of unwonted reflections.

"Growing old!" when was that sound musical to the ears of womanhood? Millicent could not, even by a stretch of courtesy, be called "young," nor in her "full bloom," yet we have some scruples about proclaiming the exact date of her birthday. She had long passed the season when the transient blossoms of an American woman's springtime wither, and the briefly expanded rose leaves of her summer fall. Yet Millicent possessed so