That was quite enough for Mrs. Miller; she did not want to read any more of it. She slipped the letter into her pocket, and went back to the breakfast-table and poured out the tea and coffee for her husband and her sons.
But when the family meal was over, it was with a very angry aspect that Mrs. Miller went upstairs and stood by her eldest daughter's bedside.
"Beatrice, here is a letter which has come for you this morning, of which I must ask you an explanation."
"You have read it, mamma!" flushing angrily, as she took it from her mother's hand.
"I have read the first line and the last. I certainly should not take the trouble to wade all through such contemptible trash!" Which was an unprovoked insult to poor Beatrice's feelings.
She snatched the letter from her mother's hand, and crumpled it jealously under her pillow.
"How can you call it trash, then, if you have not read it?"
It was hard, certainly; to have her letter opened was bad enough, but to have it called names was worse still. The letter, which to Beatrice would be so full of sacred charm and delight—such a poem on love and its sweetness—was nothing more to her mother than "contemptible trash!"
But where in the whole world has a love-letter been indited, however delightful and perfect it may be to the writer and the receiver of it, that is nothing but an object of ridicule or contempt to the whole world beside? Love is divine as Heaven itself to the two people who are concerned in its ever new delights; but to us lookers-on its murmurs are but fooleries, its sighs are ludicrous, and its written words absolute imbecilities; and never a memory of our own lost lives can make the spectacle of it in others anything but an irritating and idiotic exhibition.
"I have read quite enough," continued Mrs. Miller, sternly, "to understand the nature of it. It is from Mr. Pryme, I imagine?"