She had been conscious of this, but it was not pleasant to have the fact detected by her friends.
Neither was it pleasant to have it bruited in society, and reported to her by one who rejoiced in the delicacy of the arrow which, feathered by friendship, she had been able to plant in the widow's breast.
She walked to her mirror and looked at herself.

There were the fine, familiar outlines of face and figure; there were the same splendid eyes; but a certain charm beyond the power of "grooming" to restore was gone.
An incipient, almost invisible, brood of wrinkles was gathering about her eyes; there was a loss of freshness of complexion, and an expression of weariness and age, which, in the repose of reflection and inquisition, almost startled her.
Her youth was gone, and, with it, the most potent charms of her person.
She was hated and suspected by her own sex, and sought by men for no reason honorable either to her or to them.

She saw that it was all, at no distant day, to have an end, and that when the end should come, her life would practically be closed.

When the means by which she had held so many men in her power were exhausted, her power would cease.

Into the blackness of that coming night she could not bear to look.