Whatever stain Zenobia had was caught from him; nor
does it seldom happen that a character of admirable qualities loses
its better life because the atmosphere that should sustain it is
rendered poisonous by such breath as this man mingled with Zenobia's.
Yet his reflections possessed their share of truth. It was a woeful
thought, that a woman of Zenobia's diversified capacity should have
fancied herself irretrievably defeated on the broad battlefield of
life, and with no refuge, save to fall on her own sword, merely
because Love had gone against her. It is nonsense, and a miserable
wrong,--the result, like so many others, of masculine egotism,--that
the success or failure of woman's existence should be made to depend
wholly on the affections, and on one species of affection, while man
has such a multitude of other chances, that this seems but an
incident. For its own sake, if it will do no more, the world should
throw open all its avenues to the passport of a woman's bleeding
heart.
As we stood around the grave, I looked often towards Priscilla,
dreading to see her wholly overcome with grief. And deeply grieved,
in truth, she was. But a character so simply constituted as hers has
room only for a single predominant affection. No other feeling can
touch the heart's inmost core, nor do it any deadly mischief. Thus,
while we see that such a being responds to every breeze with
tremulous vibration, and imagine that she must be shattered by the
first rude blast, we find her retaining her equilibrium amid shocks
that might have overthrown many a sturdier frame.
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