The Clergyman's Wife and Other Sketches/The Coquette

by Anna Cora Mowatt

The Coquette.

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he admired of many eyes and the beloved of numberless hearts, (male ones, be it understood, for women are strangely chary in bestowing affection upon her,) is Amanda Littleton. See how regally she stands, begirt by her worshipping subjects! How the ballroom moths, that float around her, sun themselves in the light of her liberally dispensed smiles!

"Bright as the sun her eyes the gazer strike,
But, like the sun, they shine on all alike."

As a juggler plays with his glittering balls, she is skilfully sporting with all those hearts, keeping them flying around her, yet attracted to her, powerless to break the charmed circle. But the artillery, with which she conquers, is so light that it seems cowardice to fly its graceful battery. The arts by which she ensnares, are so subtle that the wisest of her train can neither analyze nor withstand them. The favors she tosses as rewards, to this or that suppliant, are so harmless, so equally distributed, that none dare chide her prodigality. Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/66 Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/67 Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/68 Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/69 Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/70 will miss the love of the only man whose affection she could have returned, and will spend her desolate and uncomforted age in mourning over the vanished triumphs which were her sole happiness, but which can never return; or else, just as she suspects that her light is beginning to wane, she will allow the most abject of her admirers, after numberless petitions, to swear himself her slave for life. But when he humbly encircles her taper finger with the golden round, the twain will change places. All the chains with which Amanda has manacled others will seem gathered together, and their weight heaped upon her own spirit; all the arrows she has sped will fly back and transfix her own heart. She will find the slave of yore transformed into the most unsparing of tyrants, and the dethroned sovereign will hopelessly sink into the humblest, dullest, most dejected of captives.

Hearken, fair Amanda, and be warned! Surrender at discretion! Lay down thine arms at the feet of some worthy suitor, yield thyself up trustingly to his mercy, and escape either destiny predicted.