Men admired her for her mind and heart, but in her presence secretly were ill at ease. Her self-dependence rendered useless their stronger arms accustomed to being leaned upon. She smiled upon them, it is true, but not as men like to be smiled upon—neither as a child, trustingly, nor as a queen, confident of their homage and gallant service. She appealed neither to their protection nor to their pride. She awoke the friend, but not the lover, in them; and so the years slipped by and she won no chivalry, because she claimed none. She had but asked and but received respect.
Our raillery, harmlessly meant, was not always kind, as I look back at it. It is scarcely pleasant to be reminded that among one's kind one is not preferred, yet Letitia bore all our jesting with steadfast pleasantry.
"Do I look forlorn? Do I look so helpless?" she would ask. Her very smile, her voice, her step, seemed in themselves an answer. "What do I want with a husband then?"
"Why," Dove would say, "to make you happy, Letitia."
"You child: I am perfectly happy."
"Well," Dove would answer, stubbornly, "to make you happier, then."
I have forgotten Letitia's answers—all but one of them:
"I lived so long with my scholar-love," she once said, sweetly, of her father, "I fear I never should be content with an ordinary man."
Dove declared that no one in Grassy Fordshire was half worthy of her cousin; at least, she said, she knew but one, and he was already wedded—and to a woman, she added, humbly, not half so good or wise or wonderful as Letitia. Dove stoutly held that Letitia could have married, had she wished it, and whom she would. Father would shake his head at that.