|
Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
||||
 |
||||
|
Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
||||
|
|
||||
|
lant jealousy by his wife, and she regarded her husband’s absorbing devotion to the child with suspicion and dislike; all that was given to her seemed so much taken from herself. From the time of the birth of this child, her health gradually sunk. A life of constant inaction, bodily and mental,- the friction of ceaseless en- nui and discontent, united to the ordinary weakness which attended the period of maternity,- in course of a few years changed the blooming young belle into a yel- low, faded, sickly woman, whose time was divided among a variety of fanciful diseases, and who considered herself, in every sense, the most ill-used and suffer- ing person in existence. There was no end of her various complaints; but her principal forte appeared to lie in sick-headache, which sometimes would confine her to her room three days out of six. As, of course, all family arrangements fell into the hands of ser- vants, St. Clare found his menage anything but comfortable. His only daughter was exceedingly delicate, and he feared that, with no one to look after her and at- tend to her, her health and life might yet fall a sacrifice to her mother’s ineffi- ciency. He had taken her with him on a tour to Vermont, and had persuaded his cousin, Miss Ophelia St. Clare, to return with him to his southern residence; and they are now returning on this boat, where we have introduced them to our read- ers. And now, while the distant domes and spires of New Orleans rise to our view, there is yet time for an introduction to Miss Ophelia. |
