But not by
any means a person of consequence, you assume? Why, yes, of some,--to
one individual at least Mrs. Laudersdale was so weak as to regard him
with complacency; she loved--adored her husband. Let me have the
justice to say that no one suspected her of it. Of course, then, Mr.
Roger Raleigh had no business to fall in love with her.
Well,--but he did.
At the time when Mrs. Laudersdale had become somewhat more than a
reigning beauty, and held her sceptre with such apparent indifference
that she seemed about abandoning it forever, she no longer dazzled with
unventured combinations of colors and materials in dress. She wore
most frequently, at this epoch, black velvet that suppled about her
well-asserted contours; and the very trail of her skirt was unlike
another woman's, for it coiled and bristled after her with a life and
motion of its own, like a serpent. Her hair, of too dead a black for
gloss or glister, was always adorned with a nasturtium-vine, whose vivid
flames seemed like some personal emanation, and whose odor, acrid and
single, dispersed a character about her; and the only ornaments she
condescended to assume were of Etruscan gold, severely simple in design,
elaborately intricate in workmanship. It is evident she was a poet in
costume, and had at last _en regle_ acquired a manner. But thirteen
years ago she apparelled herself otherwise, and thirteen years ago it
was that Mr.
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