that an instinct of pity and courtesy would even turn every casual
glance away? There was a strange, sorrowful pleading in the one
expressive side of the man's countenance, and a singularly untoward
incident presently called it forth, and made it almost ludicrously
pitiful. A bustling fellow entered at a way-station, his arms full of a
great frame that he carried. As he blundered along the passage, looking
for a seat, a jolt of the car, in starting, pitched him suddenly into
the vacant place beside this man; and the open expanse of the large
looking-glass--for it was that which the frame held--was fairly smitten,
like an insult of fate, into the very face of the unfortunate.

"Beg pardon," the new comer said, in an off-hand way, as he settled
himself, holding the glass full before the other while he righted it;
and then, for the first time, giving a quick glance toward him. The
astonishment, the intuitive repulsion, the consciousness of what he had
done, betokened by the instant look of the one man, and the helpless,
mute "How could you?" that seemed spoken in the strange, uprolled,
one-sided expression of the other,--these involuntarily-met regards made
a brief concurrence at once sad and irresistibly funny, as so many
things in this strange life are.

The man of the mirror inclined his burden quietly the other way; and now
it reflected the bright faces opposite, under the pheasant plumes. Was
it any delight to Leslie to see her own face so? What was the use of
being--what right had she to wish to be--pretty and pleasant to look at,
when there were such utter lifelong loss and disfigurement in the world
for others? Why should it not as well happen to her? And how did the
world seem to such a person, and where was the _worth while_ of it? This
was the question which lingered last in her mind, and to which all else
reverted. _To be able to bear_--perhaps this was it; and this was