One subject, about which--very impertinently, moreover--I perplexed
myself with a great many conjectures, was, whether Zenobia had ever
been married. The idea, it must be understood, was unauthorized by
any circumstance or suggestion that had made its way to my ears. So
young as I beheld her, and the freshest and rosiest woman of a
thousand, there was certainly no need of imputing to her a destiny
already accomplished; the probability was far greater that her coming
years had all life's richest gifts to bring. If the great event of a
woman's existence had been consummated, the world knew nothing of it,
although the world seemed to know Zenobia well. It was a ridiculous
piece of romance, undoubtedly, to imagine that this beautiful
personage, wealthy as she was, and holding a position that might
fairly enough be called distinguished, could have given herself away
so privately, but that some whisper and suspicion, and by degrees a
full understanding of the fact, would eventually be blown abroad.
But then, as I failed not to consider, her original home was at a
distance of many hundred miles. Rumors might fill the social
atmosphere, or might once have filled it, there, which would travel
but slowly, against the wind, towards our Northeastern metropolis,
and perhaps melt into thin air before reaching it.

There was not--and I distinctly repeat it--the slightest foundation
in my knowledge for any surmise of the kind. But there is a species
of intuition,--either a spiritual lie or the subtile recognition of a
fact,--which comes to us in a reduced state of the corporeal system.
The soul gets the better of the body, after wasting illness, or when
a vegetable diet may have mingled too much ether in the blood.
Vapors then rise up to the brain, and take shapes that often image
falsehood, but sometimes truth. The spheres of our companions have,