Clemence | Page 5

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 and toil, the young lady in question had had, thus far, a
totally different experience. Mrs. Brown's educational advantages had
been limited to a knowledge of reading, writing and ciphering, with a
something of grammar. Miss Brown's childhood had passed under the

tutilage of accomplished masters. She could dance, execute a few
showy pieces upon the piano without a blunder, utter glibly French and
Italian phrases, and had, with the help of her teacher, finished,
creditably, a landscape, a gorgeous sunset, of amber and crimson, and
purple-tinted clouds, which hung in the most conspicuous position in
her mother's drawing-room. Melinda read novels, frequented theatres,
and talked slang, like the "girl of the period," and was the idol of her
weak mother, whom she ruled like a queen. Unfortunately, "my lady
Graystone," as she was called in the clique over which Mrs. Crane
presided, had an innate love for the pure and beautiful, and a thorough
contempt for vulgarity in every form. The gorgeous Melinda, therefore,
was not a person calculated to inspire a lady of her high-toned mind
with any deep feeling of regard or esteem. The elder woman, who, from
her long probation at service, before she was fortunate enough to secure
William Brown, the grocer's apprentice, had caught that cringing
obsequiousness that we so often see in those accustomed to serve, and
could have borne patiently, any slights or rebuffs that opposed her
entrance into the charmed circle which she had determined to invade at
all hazards. Meek and fawning, where she desired to gain favor, as she
was insolent and overbearing to her inferiors, she was willing to
commence at the lowest round of the social ladder, and creep up slowly
to a position that suited her ambition, in the same manner in which she
had won her way to wealth out of the depth of poverty. But, when the
blooming daughter of the retired grocer returned from boarding school,
all things were changed. "Melinda was a lady," "entitled to a proud
position in society, by virtue of her lady-like acquirements," and she
demanded an instant recognition of her claims by said society. The
exclusive circle of which the beautiful wife of Grosvenor Graystone
had long been an acknowledged leader, politely, but firmly repulsed the
overtures of the ladies of the Brown family, in such a way that they
were not again repeated, and the result, as we have seen, was their
cordial dislike, and even more, a vindictive hatred.
"Hard to part with everything," hissed Mrs. Brown, "and you pity them,
I suppose, Alicia! You, who have been snubbed by them so repeatedly,
that you have come to expect nothing better at their hands! You, a
daughter of the people, so to speak;" (Mrs. Brown, since her signal

defeat by the Graystone clique, had been at no little pains to air her
democratic principles, much in the way we have seen some of our
politicians do in the present day.) However, she was not so good a
sensational speaker as Mrs. Crane, and like every one who attempts to
imitate anything out of their "line," or perform impossibilities, and
probably owing, in part,