Not beautiful! Never did mortal form gifted with beauty approaching nearer to our conception of the divine or angelic, stand smiling in the consciousness of its own charms before a mirror.
“Now,” she proceeded, “I am going to make everything quite plain. I never told you this before, but it is time I should now. Listen—Charles Osborne bound himself by a curse, that if he met, during his absence, a girl more beautiful than I am—or than I was then, I should say,—he would cease to write to me—he would cease to love me. Now, here’s my secret,—he has found a girl more beautiful than I am,—than I was then, I, mean,—for he has ceased to write to me—and of course he has ceased to love me. So mamma, I am not beautiful, and the Fawn of Springvale—his own Jane Sinclair is forgotten.”
She sat down and hung her head for some minutes, and the family, thinking that she either wept or was about to weep, did not think it right to address her. She rose up, however, and said:
“Agnes is my witness: Did not you, Agnes, say that I am now much handsomer than when Charles saw me last?”
“I did, darling, and I do.”
“Very well, mamma—perhaps you will find me beautiful yet. Now the case is this, and I will be guided by my papa. Let me see—Charles may have seen a girl more beautiful than I was then,—but how does he know whether she is more beautiful than I am now?”
It was—it was woful to see a creature of such unparalleled grace and loveliness working out the calculations of insanity, in order to sustain a broken heart.
“But then,” she added, still smiling in conscious beauty, “why does he not come to see me now? Why does he not come?” After musing again for some time, she dropped on her knees in one of those rapid transitions of feeling peculiar to persons of her unhappy class; and joining her hands, looked up to Agnes with a countenance utterly and indescribably mournful, exclaiming as she did it, in the same words as before:—
“Oh Agnes, Agnes, but my heart is heavy!”
She then laid down her head on her sister’s knees, and for a long time mused and murmured to herself, as if her mind was busily engaged on some topic full of grief and misery. This was evident by the depth of her sighs, which shook her whole frame, and heaved with convulsive quiverings through her bosom. Having remained in this posture about ten minutes, she arose, and without speaking, or noticing any of the family, went out and sauntered with slow and melancholy steps about the place where she loved to walk.