Many years have rolled by since the occurrence of these events, and Miss
Henley continues the same in every thing but appearance. The freshness
of her beauty has given place to a look of intelligence and delicacy
that seems gradually fitting her for her last and most important change.
The name of George Morton is never heard to pass her lips. Mrs.
Delafield declares it to be a subject that she never dares to approach,
nor in her repeated refusals of matrimonial offers has Charlotte ever
been known to allude to the desolation of her own heart. Her father is
dead; but to her mother Miss Henley has in a great measure supplied his
loss. With her friends she is always cheerful, and apparently happy,
though the innocent gaiety of her childhood is sensibly checked, and
there are moments that betray the existence of a grief that is only the
more durable, because it is less violent. In short, she lives a pattern
for her sex, unfettered by any romantic and foolish pledges, discharging
all the natural duties of her years and station in an exemplary manner,
but unwilling to incur any new ones, because she has but one heart, and
that was long since given with its purity, sincerity, and truth, to him
who is dead, and can never become the property of another.
When Charlotte Henley dies, although she may not have fulfilled one of
the principal objects of her being, by becoming a mother, her example
will survive her; and those who study her character and integrity of
feeling, will find enough to teach them what properties are the most
valuable in forming that sacred character--while her own sex can learn
that, though in the case of Miss Henley, Providence has denied the full
exercise of her excellences, it has at the same time rendered her a
striking instance of female dignity, by exhibiting to the world the
difference between affection and caprice, and by shewing how much
Imagination is inferior to Heart.
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's Tales for Fifteen, by James Fenimore Cooper
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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