The Little Shop-Window

The maiden lady's devotions are concluded. Will she now issue forth
over the threshold of our story? Not yet, by many moments. First,
every drawer in the tall, old-fashioned bureau is to be opened, with
difficulty, and with a succession of spasmodic jerks then, all must
close again, with the same fidgety reluctance. There is a rustling of
stiff silks; a tread of backward and forward footsteps to and fro
across the chamber. We suspect Miss Hepzibah, moreover, of taking a
step upward into a chair, in order to give heedful regard to her
appearance on all sides, and at full length, in the oval, dingy-framed
toilet-glass, that hangs above her table. Truly! well, indeed! who
would have thought it! Is all this precious time to be lavished on the
matutinal repair and beautifying of an elderly person, who never goes
abroad, whom nobody ever visits, and from whom, when she shall have
done her utmost, it were the best charity to turn one's eyes another
way?

Now she is almost ready. Let us pardon her one other pause; for it is
given to the sole sentiment, or, we might better say,--heightened and
rendered intense, as it has been, by sorrow and seclusion,--to the
strong passion of her life. We heard the turning of a key in a small
lock; she has opened a secret drawer of an escritoire, and is probably
looking at a certain miniature, done in Malbone's most perfect style,
and representing a face worthy of no less delicate a pencil. It was
once our good fortune to see this picture. It is a likeness of a young
man, in a silken dressing-gown of an old fashion, the soft richness of
which is well adapted to the countenance of reverie, with its full,
tender lips, and beautiful eyes, that seem to indicate not so much
capacity of thought, as gentle and voluptuous emotion. Of the
possessor of such features we shall have a right to ask nothing, except
that he would take the rude world easily, and make himself happy in it.
Can it have been an early lover of Miss Hepzibah? No; she never had a
lover--poor thing, how could she?--nor ever knew, by her own
experience, what love technically means. And yet, her undying faith
and trust, her fresh remembrance, and continual devotedness towards the
original of that miniature, have been the only substance for her heart
to feed upon.