The Clergyman's Wife and Other Sketches/The Married Flirt

by Anna Cora Mowatt

The Married Flirt.

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ho calls Melinda Belmont a flirt? She is only as attractive to mankind collectively as to the one especial man whose name she bears, whose domicile she graces with a regnant presence powerfully suggestive of feminine superiority and masculine nonentity. A flirt, forsooth? She will resent the title with virtuous indignation. With a majestic uplifting of her queenly head, she will ask you whether a woman, when she honors a man by uniting her destiny with his, necessarily enters into a compact to render herself odious to the rest of his sex?

Melinda had not won the name of a coquette before her marriage. A handsome, high-spirited girl, striking in figure, captivating in manner, brilliant in conversation, and not lacking intellect, she married young. Possibly, she fancied herself in love, or her suitor's delicious flatteries made her in love, with herself, which she mistook for being in love with him; a very common occurrence! At all events she evinced no shrewd, cold calculation in choosing among her many admirers; she neither selected the Crœsus, nor the Adonis, but yielded, Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/73 Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/74 Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/75 Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/76 Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/77 Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/78 Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/79 Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/80 Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/81 eyes upon the unambitious wife, her youthful contemporary, who never dreamed of being a belle, whom Melinda scorned for her even, unpretentious. ways, but who still retains a lingering freshness, a kindly warmth, a serene vivacity, a soul-renewed loveliness that have preserved a husband's devotion intact, and won from time-tried friends reverence and tenderness in abundance, and now make the nonpareil beauty of other days reflect despairingly upon her wasted opportunities, her hollow and valueless existence, and inwardly murmur, "Oh, that I could change places with her, here and hereafter!"