'Her mother's voice was at that moment heard at the door, and I went out to give Laetitia an opportunity of slipping off to her room without meeting the family.
''Have you seen 'Titia?' said Mrs. Sunderland to me.
''Yes, she has just gone to her room.'
''Well, I don't know what's the matter with the child since last night, she's acted so queer. I 'spect she'll get over it, though; she always did have tantrums.'
'In one sense, however, she never did get over it, and it was many years before she really recovered much of her old light-heartedness, although she had an appearance of it to superficial companions. For a long time her inner life was shut from the view of her friends; but I am at present able to read it for you, partly from what she herself told me afterward, and partly from that insight which we all have into those lives and experiences with which we are in sympathy.
'One afternoon she left me very happy and gay, and went to see a friend near the town. She was returning slowly toward home, satisfied with herself, and enjoying intensely the beauty of the season, when she saw two ladies approaching her. They were strangers, and she looked at them with interest, attracted by their pleasing faces and graceful bearing. As they passed her, she overheard one of them say in an undertone, 'What a frightfully homely girl!'
'There could be no mistake. She only was meant, and the words went like a sharp dagger to her heart.
'While she was thinking how charming they were, she to them appeared only frightful. The whole future in an instant opened before her, and she saw herself, as she moved through it, constantly exciting, wherever she went, only repulsion in the minds of strangers and friends.
'All the charm and interest of life fled at the moment. That day and the next she was in a stupor of grief, from which she was first awakened by my tones of sympathy. My advice, too, opened a door of relief by giving her something to do. For the first time she remembered there was a Being who knew all about her sorrow, knew it was coming, understood its cause, and its effects. This Being she could open her mind to, and only to Him. He would not be surprised, and He would not annoy her with sympathy which could not cure and would only irritate. She knelt down, and with minute fidelity told Him every thought of her heart. The next day she felt cheerful—she thought she was resigned; but it was only the reaction caused by the tears and confession of the previous night, and it soon passed away. The words 'frightfully homely' echoed and re-echoed through her heart. All that was dreary, hopeless, and miserable clustered around them, and shut out from her the bright, happy life of the past. Her duties were performed as before. With others she was sufficiently animated; but when alone, she was wretched. Thus the months rolled on, till they became a year; and I, who had never been deceived by her occasional liveliness, began to think what I could do to change the current of her thoughts, which seemed to have no tendency to change of themselves.
'But Laetitia's life was not all feeling. Feeling suffers passively, with greater or less endurance, according to the strength of the physical frame, but the intellect always seeks a remedy for sorrow. It seemed horrible to her that she of all the world—of all her world, at least—should be so homely that no one could look on her without pain. It was intolerable, it ought not to have been, but it was permitted, it must be. Rebellion came of course, bitter rebellion, but it could do no good. There was the fate, it was impossible to escape it. What then? Drag through a miserable life till death came happily to relieve it? She was too young. Fifty, sixty years of travel over a dreary, barren waste, with no joy upon it? No, no, she could not do it—suicide first. But suicide was wrong, and could never be resorted to. There must be some relief elsewhere. Where was it? what was it?