Everything had
failed her; prosperity in the world's sense, for her opulence was
gone,--the heart's prosperity, in love. And there was a secret
burden on her, the nature of which is best known to you. Young as
she was, she had tried life fully, had no more to hope, and something,
perhaps, to fear. Had Providence taken her away in its own holy
hand, I should have thought it the kindest dispensation that could be
awarded to one so wrecked."
"You mistake the matter completely," rejoined Westervelt.
"What, then, is your own view of it?" I asked.
"Her mind was active, and various in its powers," said he. "Her
heart had a manifold adaptation; her constitution an infinite
buoyancy, which (had she possessed only a little patience to await
the reflux of her troubles) would have borne her upward triumphantly
for twenty years to come. Her beauty would not have waned--or
scarcely so, and surely not beyond the reach of art to restore it--in
all that time. She had life's summer all before her, and a hundred
varieties of brilliant success. What an actress Zenobia might have
been! It was one of her least valuable capabilities. How forcibly
she might have wrought upon the world, either directly in her own
person, or by her influence upon some man, or a series of men, of
controlling genius! Every prize that could be worth a woman's
having--and many prizes which other women are too timid to
desire--lay within Zenobia's reach."
"In all this," I observed, "there would have been nothing to satisfy
her heart.
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