“I have never met with her before,” said Miss Ellen Lee, “but I really liked her very much.”
“She converses very well,” said the elder Miss Lee. “We had an opportunity of judging last evening, for she did the most of the talking.”
“She’s one of your talking women, I believe, but that’s her business, you know,” rejoined the dandy, in an affected languid tone of voice, as if the exertion of talking was too much for a person of gentility. A sharp retort trembled on my tongue, but I checked myself, as my eyes passed over his insipid, characterless face; and I returned with such animation to a little drawing I was making for Cornelia’s mother, that I snapped off the end of my pencil.
“I did not know that Miss Clemson visited this winter in society,” said Cornelia. “Is she not in mourning?”
“Oh! no,” exclaimed Miss Ellen Lee, “she is not in mourning, for she was dressed beautifully last evening, she had on a light silver-gray silk, very rich and expensive looking;—any thing but mourning.”
“She does not approve of mourning,” said the elder sister, “and although her brother and his wife died only a few weeks since, I suppose she does not approve of observing any of the customs of society on such occasions, no matter how sad they may be.”
“Why, my dear,” said Mrs. Knowles, a purse-proud parvenue woman, “persons not properly in society, like Miss Clemson, are excusable in differing from its usual customs; it matters little what they do.”
I quietly permitted the conversation to proceed, for I felt too much contempt for the company, to take any trouble to defend my dear friend, Mary Clemson. I knew their remarks proceeded from willful malice, and that it would be of little use to set them right. My little pencil sketch, however, from my repressed temper, was growing quite as spirited under my quick, impulsive touches, as the original, from which I was copying it—the only good that resulted from the gossip; and I should have remained silent, had not my friend, Cornelia Payne—who was not acquainted with Miss Clemson, joined in the conversation, and animadverted pretty severely on Miss Clemson’s want of feeling.
“She might dress as she pleased,” said Cornelia, in reply to a flippant remark of Ellen Lee’s, that Miss Clemson dressed very expensively and extravagantly for one in her position and circumstances; “dressing is a matter that belongs to one’s own taste, and so far as circumstances and means are concerned, that is nobody’s business; but I think it argues a want of feeling, a coldness of heart, when one who has recently gone through so much trouble, can so readily throw it aside and make their appearance at an evening party.”
“Oh, Miss Clemson prides herself upon being above all such weaknesses,” said Miss Hill, another young lady present. “Little Sallie Foster, one of her pupils, told me the other day, that Miss Mary had given her quite a lecture because she cried at the prospect of a rainy day, which would necessarily put off a May party, and said she could scarcely conceive of the necessity of shedding tears, no matter how great the trial might be.”