That she was an Episcopalian, and preferred to read her prayers
rather than to listen to those written and memorised by the
Presbyterian minister, seemed to be regarded as a relic of
heathenish rites--a thing almost cannibalistic. When she elected to
engage a woman and a "hired man" to manage her house, she felt the
disapprobation of the entire village, as if she had sunk into some
decadent and enervating Lower-Empire degeneracy.

The crisis came when Laura travelled alone to Boston to hear
Modjeska in "Marie Stuart" and "Macbeth," and upon returning full of
enthusiasm, allowed it to be understood that she had a half-formed
desire of emulating such an example. A group of lady-deaconesses,
headed by the Presbyterian minister, called upon her, with some
intention of reasoning and labouring with her.

They got no farther than the statement of the cause of this visit.
The spirit and temper of the South, that she had from her mother,
flamed up in Laura at last, and the members of the "committee,"
before they were well aware, came to themselves in the street
outside the front gate, dazed and bewildered, staring at each other,
all confounded and stunned by the violence of an outbreak of
long-repressed emotion and long-restrained anger, that like an actual
physical force had swept them out of the house.

At the same moment Laura, thrown across her bed, wept with a
vehemence that shook her from head to foot. But she had not the
least compunction for what she had said, and before the month was
out had said good-by to Barrington forever, and was on her way to
Chicago, henceforth to be her home.