And who that visited, during the summer of 1837, the various fashionable watering-places, does not remember that pale girl, who, attended by a doating father, sought a restoration of impaired health. Amy was lovely still; true, the sunny smile was gone—but, in the place of that garish splendor of radiance, which was wont “to burn like the mines of sulphur,” there remained the calm and dreamy beauty of the moonlighted sky. The rose had fled her cheek, but the lily, in all its purity, shone from her Parian brow. She had felt, at last, that she possessed a heart. She was no longer “a lump of ice in the clear, cold morn.” But her heart was an unwritten scroll, upon which none of late dared attempt to inscribe the word “love.” Many admired, some adored,—but her name had gone forth, as of a heartless coquette. To win her love, would have been ineffably sweet; but, like the French gallant, no one thought it reasonable to thrust his head into a hive in search of the honey!
“Amy Laverty looks better, to-night, and begins to beam radiantly again, Walton,” said a gay lounger, to his friend.
“Yes,” was the reply, “chaste as the icicle, and every whit as cold! Like the henchman of Harold the Dauntless, she has, or had, the faculty of chilling all who ventured within her influence!”
“Oh! you speak feelingly,” laughed Withers, “for I remember, now, that she had you ‘within her influence,’ some years since, when you held a clerk-ship at Washington; and then she placed her icy fingers on you! A frozen child dreads the frost, I perceive, as much as a burned child does the fire!”
“Rail away, Tom! With honest Grumio, ‘I confess the cupe!’” replied our old friend Stanton, who, at the Jackson Inaugural Ball, had been the subject of Pennant’s remarks to Amy, during the flirtations of the dance. “The undeniable fact is, I was jilted.” In those few words are embodied the history of Amy’s life. “Van Buren never had so many applications for office, since he was inaugurated, in March last, as she has had proposals, and the disappointed applicants have been about as numerous under one administration as the other. I was deeply, desperately, madly in love with her, but she cured me—chilled me off!”
“Has she a heart, think you, Stanton?” continued Withers, with mock solemnity. “I have read of a French surgeon, who dissected a man, and found him without that organ. Do you not think that ‘the Laverty’ might be coupled with him, in this Noah’s ark of a world, as the two of a kind?”
“Nay, hardly as bad as that! Amy has been thoughtless, ambitious, and possessed of the pride of Lucifer—like him, she is a fallen angel; fallen from the effects of that pride, but I sincerely believe she has been humbled in a measure—that she has a heart, and that it has been touched. I have seen much of her; for my dismissal as her lover, never interrupted our friendly relations; and she has been an altered woman ever since Frank Pennant married Kate Stanton;—but the change came too late, and she now stands a fair chance to “lead apes,” for I know not the man who would venture to address her! The days of your Petrucios and Duke Aranzas are past, and live but in the drama. And so she attained the reputation of a coquette, and therefore—”
“Yes, I understand,” interrupted Withers; “but see, yonder goes Mr. Stanton, another of her discarded ones. I am told she passed some bitter slight on him.”
“Yes, she made no secret of her scorn at the humble lot of his parents. But she little knew the brilliant career which destiny and perseverance had marked out for him. Henry Stanton goes to Congress this winter; and no man of his age was ever elected under such brilliant auguries of success. He has never married, and I have reason to believe that her conduct has had a marked influence upon his whole past life.”
“How so?”