The House of The Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne Chapter 2 Page 4

give heedful regard to her appearance on all sides, and at full length, in the oval, dingy-framed toilet-glass, that hangs above her table. Truly! well, indeed! who would have thought it!

Is all this precious time to be lavished on the matutinal repair and beautifying of an elderly person, who never goes abroad, whom nobody ever visits, and from whom, when she shall have done her utmost, it were the best charity to turn one’s eyes another way?

Now she is almost ready. Let us pardon her one other pause; for it is given to the sole sentiment, or, we might better say, — heightened and rendered intense, as it has been, by sorrow and seclusion, — to the strong passion of her life. We heard the turning of a key in a small lock; she has opened a secret drawer of an