"It must have been hard to part with everything that was dear to them by
association, for I hear that they gave up everything, even Clemence's
piano, to pay debts."

There was a pitying tone in the speaker's voice. Alicia Linden, for all
her tragic accents, her deep-set eyes, with their beetling brows, and
her generally almost repulsive exterior, had more real heart than any of
the women present. Perhaps she remembered that time in the vanished
past, when she had stood by the coffin that contained the loved of her
youth, he who had made her girlhood one dream of happiness, but over
whose calm face the grass had greened and faded for many a weary year;
perhaps this remembrance touched a chord of her better nature. Life,
with its cares, and sorrows, and disappointments, had hardened her, till
she had almost lost faith in humanity. Moreover, she was a woman,
homely, and old and common, and with feminine malice and spite she could
not readily forgive another of her own sex for being beautiful, refined
and attractive. She said emphatically, that "it was well that, in this
world, pride could sometimes be humbled;" but for all that, the memory
of that day so long ago, passed alone in her desolation and sorrowful
widowhood, lent a pitying sadness to her voice that placed her
infinitely above these other soulless ones of her sex, with their cold
eyes and unsympathetic tones.

Vixenish Mrs. Brown detected the weakness at once, and pounced upon it
with avidity. She was blessed with a good memory, and one or two well
remembered slights from the unconscious objects of her animadversions,
rankled bitterly, and she hungered for revenge. She exulted now without
stint, and took no pains to conceal it. The lady had a blooming
daughter, Melinda. If the mother's early life had been one of privation