She had resolved that in loving her lord she would not
worship him, and that in giving her heart she would only so give it
as it should be given to a human creature like herself. She had
acted on these high resolves, and hence it had come to pass,--not
unnaturally,--that Mr. Godfrey Holmes had told her that it was "her
fault."
She was a pretty, fair girl, with soft dark-brown hair, and soft
long dark eyelashes. Her grey eyes, though quiet in their tone,
were tender and lustrous. Her face was oval, and the lines of her
cheek and chin perfect in their symmetry. She was generally quiet
in her demeanour, but when moved she could rouse herself to great
energy, and speak with feeling and almost with fire. Her fault was
a reverence for martyrdom in general, and a feeling, of which she
was unconscious, that it became a young woman to be unhappy in
secret;--that it became a young woman, I might rather say, to have a
source of unhappiness hidden from the world in general, and endured
without any detriment to her outward cheerfulness. We know the
story of the Spartan boy who held the fox under his tunic. The fox
was biting into him,--into the very entrails; but the young hero
spake never a word. Now Bessy Garrow was inclined to think that it
was a good thing to have a fox always biting, so that the torment
caused no ruffling to her outward smiles.
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