tone of voice which borrowed its vibrations from the deepest fibers of her heart.”
With such charms of person, added to the expectation of a not inconsiderable fortune, it was not strange that Mademoiselle Phlipon was soon surrounded with applicants for her hand; but among them all she failed to perccive the ideal hero-husband of her imagination, and she dismissed them one after the other, even the most eligible, with a nonchalance which nearly drove her father to despair, for he was anxious to see her settled in life, the wife of some wealthy tradesman.
But Manon, with a good home, many friends, her books, and a free heart, was in no hurry to marry, and her life went on happily and joyously until in 1773 her first real sorrow came to her in the death of her tender, loving mother, to whom she was passionately devoted, and her grief at the death of this dear friend was such as to prostrate her on a bed of sickness and for a while threatened to destroy her reason or
