bewildered, out of the sphere of my own thoughts, and pained at the
roughness with which he treated what I had cherished.

I was presently relieved, however, of further reflection by Mardon's
asking his daughter whether her face was better. It turned out that
all the afternoon and evening she had suffered greatly from neuralgia.
She had said nothing about it while I was there, but had behaved with
cheerfulness and freedom. Mentally I had accused her of slightness,
and inability to talk upon the subjects which interested Mardon and
myself; but when I knew she had been in torture all the time, my
opinion was altered. I thought how rash I had been in judging her as I
continually judged other people, without being aware of everything they
had to pass through; and I thought, too, that if I had a fit of
neuralgia, everybody near me would know it, and be almost as much
annoyed by me as I myself should be by the pain.

It is curious, also, that when thus proclaiming my troubles I often
considered. my eloquence meritorious, or, at least, a kind of talent
for which I ought to praise God, contemning rather my silent friends as
something nearer than myself to the expressionless animals. To parade
my toothache, describing it with unusual adjectives, making it felt by
all the company in which I might happen to be, was to me an assertion
of my superior nature. But, looking at Mary, and thinking about her as
I walked home, I perceived that her ability to be quiet, to subdue
herself, to resist the temptation for a whole evening of drawing
attention to herself by telling us what she was enduring, was heroism,
and that my contrary tendency was pitiful vanity. I perceived that
such virtues as patience and self-denial--which, clad in russet dress,
I had often passed by unnoticed when I had found them amongst the poor
or the humble--were more precious and more ennobling to their possessor