Maude Glendower

She was a most magnificent looking woman, as she sat within her
richly furnished room on that warm September night, now gazing idly
dawn the street and again bending her head to catch the first sound
of footsteps on the stairs.

Personal preservation had been the great study of her life, and forty years had not dimmed the luster of her soft, black eyes, or woven one thread of silver among the luxuriant
curls which clustered in such profusion around her face and neck.
Gray hairs and Maude Glendower had nothing in common, and the fair,
round cheek, the pearly teeth, the youthful bloom, and white,
uncovered shoulders seemed to indicate that time had made an
exception in her favor, and dropped her from its wheel.

With a portion of her history the reader is already acquainted.
Early orphaned, she was thrown upon the care of an old aunt who,
proud of her wondrous beauty, spared no pains to make her what
nature seemed to will that she should be, a coquette and a belle. At
seventeen we find her a schoolgirl in New Haven, where she turned
the heads of all the college boys, and then murmured because one, a
dark-eyed youth of twenty, withheld from her the homage she claimed
as her just due.

In a fit of pique she besieged a staid, handsome
young M.D. of twenty-seven, who had just commenced to practice in
the city, and who, proudly keeping himself aloof from the college
students, knew nothing of the youth she so much fancied. Perfectly
intoxicated with her beauty, he offered her his hand, and was
repulsed. Overwhelmed with disappointment and chagrin, he then left
the city, and located himself at Laurel Hill, where now we find him
the selfish, overbearing Dr. Kennedy.