I made no answer. I repented me of having uttered the words, and Miss Hallam went on:
“I should advise you to forget that there is such a thing as unhappiness. You will soon succeed.”
“Yes—I will try,” said I, in a low voice, as the cause of my unhappiness rose up, gaunt, grim and forbidding, with thin lips curved in a mocking smile, and glittering, snake-like eyes fixed upon my face. I shivered faintly; and she, though looking quickly at me, seemed to think she had said enough about my unhappiness. Her next question surprised me much.
“Are you fair in complexion?” she inquired.
“Yes,” said I. “I am very fair—fairer than either of my sisters. But are you near-sighted?”
“Near sightless,” she replied, with a bitter little laugh. “Cataract. I have so many joys in my life that Providence has thought fit to temper the sunshine of my lot. I am to content myself with the store of pleasant remembrances with which my mind is crowded, when I can see nothing outside. A delightful arrangement. It is what pious people call a ‘cross,’ or a ‘visitation,’ or something of that kind. I am not pious, and I call it the destruction of what little happiness I had.”
“Oh, I am very, very sorry for you,” I answered, feeling what I spoke, for it had always been my idea of misery to be blind—shut away from the sunlight upon the fields, from the hue of the river, from all that “lust of the eye” which meets us on every side.
“But are you quite alone?” I continued. “Have you no one to—”
I stopped; I was about to add, “to be kind to you—to take care of you?” but I suddenly remembered that it would not do for me to ask such questions.
“No, I live quite alone,” said she, abruptly. “Did you think of offering to relieve my solitude?”