"Have you nothing more to say of our young friend?" I asked.
"She is very much changed."
"For the better?"
"Some might think so. I do not." There was a disappointed manner
about my wife.
"In what respect is she changed?"
"Some would say that she had grown handsome; and, in truth, her
countenance strikes you, at first, as much improved. It is rounded
to a fuller outline, and has a style about it, caught, I suppose,
from city life and feeling. But she carries her head with a
statelier air than is becoming Squire Floyd's daughter; and I am
very sure, that, as the wife of Ralph Dewey, she has acquired no
special consequence. Rich jewelry may be very well in city
drawing-rooms, and public assemblages, where dress is made
conspicuous. But to sport diamond ear-rings and breastpin, splendid
enough for a countess, in her father's little parlor, and before the
eyes of friends who loved her once for herself alone, savored so
strongly of weak pride and vanity, that I could not look upon her
with any of my old feelings. It was Delia Floyd no longer. Already,
the pure, sweet, artless maiden, had changed into a woman of the
world, dressed up for show.
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