Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/80

to be spared the cares of maternity! As well rejoice that she has foregone salvation!

Thus passes Melinda's budding spring and summer bloom. But the canker-worm in the fruit has wrought decay where should be autumnal mellowness. Her charms, almost before they reach maturity, begin to fleet, in spite of all the detaining arts of her toilet. Her once worshipped mirror becomes a taunting torment. Years write their record in ungracious lines across her brow, for no noble emotions, no high actions have beautified the chronicle. Inexorable Time quenches the fire of her eyes, and his attendant crows leave the pressure of unsightly feet at the corners. Her features, once so finely cut, grow sharp and harsh. Her "pretty petulance" degenerates into irritability. Her voice has caught a piercing shrillness which strikes the ear like a bayonet's point; possibly it is that tone which makes her repartee sound so much more cutting, so much less mirth-provoking than of yore.

There is no longer a flutter of excitement when she enters a crowd. The men who once gathered around her stand aloof, unconscious of her presence, or hover about some younger married flirt, who has jostled her from her pedestal in Vanity Fair. Poor Melinda makes desperate efforts to lure back the recreants, but the very exertion renders her manner forced, distressingly restless, peevish, exacting. Her failing assumption of juvenile