She took up her own handkerchief as she spoke, and after having again kissed her sister, wiped her cheeks and dried her eyes with childlike tenderness and affection. She then, looked sorrowfully upon Agnes, and said—“Oh, Agnes, Agnes, but my heart is heavy—heavy!”
Agnes’s tears were again beginning to flow, but Jane once more kissed her, and hastily wiping her eyes, exclaimed in that sweet, low voice with which we address children, “Hush, hush, Agnes, do not cry, I will not make you sorry any more.”
She then went on to dress herself, but uttered not another word until she and Agnes met the family below stairs.
“I am now come, papa and mamma, and William, and my darling Maria—but, Maria, listen,—I won’t have a tear, and you, Agnes,—I am come now to tell you a secret.”
“And, dearest life,” said her mother, “what is it?”
“What made them call me the Fawn of Springvale?”
“For your gentleness, love,” said Mr. Sinclair.
“And for your beauty, darling,” added her mother.
“Papa has it,” she replied quickly; “for my gentleness, for my gentleness. My beauty, mamma, I am not beautiful.”
While uttering these words, she approached the looking-glass, and surveyed herself with a smile of irony that seemed to disclaim her own assertion. But it was easy to perceive that the irony was directed to some one not then present, and that it was also associated with the memory of something painful to her in an extreme degree.