This sentence highlights Widow Wycherly's vanity in this short story: <span>She stood before the mirror courtesying and simpering to her own image, and greeting it as the friend whom she loved better than all the world beside.</span>
Hello! I have found the excerpt from Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" from another source and I will place it here:
<span>As for the Widow Wycherly, tradition tells us that she was a great beauty in her day; but, for a long while past, she had lived in deep seclusion, on account of certain scandalous stories which had prejudiced the gentry of the town against her. The Widow Wycherly—if so fresh a damsel could be called a widow—tripped up to the doctor's chair, with a mischievous merriment in her rosy face. She stood before the mirror courtesying and simpering to her own image, and greeting it as the friend whom she loved better than all the world beside. Blushing, panting, struggling, chiding, laughing, her warm breath fanning each of their faces by turns, she strove to disengage herself, yet still remained in their triple embrace.
The bolded sentence describes Widow Wycherly's vanity. Vanity is defined to be the overly narcissistic appreciation of oneself. In that sentence, we can see that her obsession with her appearance ("own image") is highlighted.
ANSWER: </span>She stood before the mirror courtesying and simpering to her own image, and greeting it as the friend whom she loved better than all the world beside.
