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Updated: June 17, 2025
For though I would not call the little lady coquettish that is too coarse and obvious a word yet there was in her that inalienable consciousness of maidenhood, that sentiment, at once of attraction and of recoil, towards creatures of the opposite sex, that gentle hope of pleasing man, that secret emotion of being pleased by him, that tremor at the idea of being desired, and that flush at the thought of being desirable, which, I suppose, may animate the mystic sensibilities of spinsterhood.
There had been a time when Mrs. Berrington had been happy enough to be Miss Lina, even though she was the elder sister; and the girl liked to think there were still old friends friends of the family, at home, for whom, even should she live to sixty years of spinsterhood, she would never be anything but Miss Laura.
It is considered as a business arrangement, a social contrivance, sometimes as an easy way to make money, but by very few as the highest form of happiness. The consolations of spinsterhood are mainly negative, but the minus sign has its proper place in the personal equation. "The other woman" does not exist for the spinster, save as a shadowy possibility.
'I was young and foolish enough to want to be in love when I married, said Helen, smiling at him with her half-closed eyes. And Gerald said that, yes, he would have expected that from her; and with this dismissed the subject from his mind, taking it for granted that Helen's disengaged, sustaining, and enlivening spinsterhood would always be there for his solace and amusement.
The attached members of the community are wont to make what Uncle Remus called "a great miration," when a woman deliberately chooses spinsterhood as her lot in life, rather than marriage. There is an implied pity in their delicate inquiries, and always the insinuation that the spinster in question could never have had an offer of marriage.
The notion of spinsterhood was odious to Margaret Adair. And Sir Philip Ashley would have been, as her mother used to say, so suitable a man for her to marry! Margaret saw it now. She wept a few quiet tears for her lost hopes, and then she arrayed herself becomingly, and, with a look of purpose on her face, went down to tea.
They receive fitting mates, of a build to promise or aid in ensuring depth of chest and long reach of arm for their progeny. Down goes the world before them. And we see how much would be due for this to a corps of ladies like Miss Graves, not allowed to remain too long on the stalk of spinsterhood. Her age might count twenty-eight: too long!
Women not even behind her back jested at her spinsterhood; and when that is true, a miracle takes place indeed. No doubt Miss Anna was a miracle, not belonging to any country, race, or age; being one of those offerings to the world which nature now and then draws from the deeps of womanhood: a pure gift of God. The two old maids drained their rectifying beverage in the shady porch.
It would not have been pleasant to him to foresee a life of spinsterhood for his daughter; but she was young, and she was a valuable assistant. How far did that latter consideration weigh with him? He put the question pretty distinctly to himself now that his wife had broached the matter thus unexpectedly. Was he prepared to behave with deliberate selfishness?
Altogether the love-making had been easy and prosperous, for Caroline, who was a sensible young woman, had readily recognized the superior advantages of marrying an excellent man of no birth or breeding, with twenty thousand a year, to remaining Miss Esterworth to her dying day, in dignified but impecunious spinsterhood. Time had proved the wisdom of her choice.
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