feeling that difference
and suffering under it. Jealousy is an indelible sentiment in the female
breast. An old maid's soul is jealous and yet void; for she knows
but one side--the miserable side--of the only passion men will allow
(because it flatters them) to women. Thus thwarted in all their hopes,
forced to deny themselves the natural development of their natures, old
maids endure an inward torment to which they never grow accustomed. It
is hard at any age, above all for a woman, to see a feeling of repulsion
on the faces of others, when her true destiny is to move all hearts
about her to emotions of grace and love. One result of this inward
trouble is that an old maid's glance is always oblique, less from
modesty than from fear and shame. Such beings never forgive society for
their false position because they never forgive themselves for it.

Now it is impossible for a woman who is perpetually at war with herself
and living in contradiction to her true life, to leave others in peace
or refrain from envying their happiness. The whole range of these sad
truths could be read in the dulled gray eyes of Mademoiselle Gamard; the
dark circles that surrounded those eyes told of the inward conflicts of
her solitary life. All the wrinkles on her face were in straight lines.
The structure of her forehead and cheeks was rigid and prominent. She
allowed, with apparent indifference, certain scattered hairs, once
brown, to grow upon her chin. Her thin lips scarcely covered teeth that
were too long, though still quite white. Her complexion was dark, and
her hair, originally black, had turned gray from frightful headaches,--a
misfortune which obliged her to wear a false front. Not knowing how to
put it on so as to conceal the junction between the real and the false,
there were often little gaps between the border of her cap and the black
string with which this semi-wig (always badly curled) was fastened to
her head. Her gown, silk in summer, merino in winter, and always brown
in color, was invariably rather tight for her angular figure and thin
arms. Her collar, limp and bent, exposed too much the red skin of a
neck which was ribbed like an oak-leaf in winter seen in the light. Her
origin explains to some extent the defects of her conformation. She
was the daughter of a wood-merchant, a peasant, who had risen from the
ranks. She might have been plump at eighteen, but no trace remained of
the fair complexion and pretty color of which