unfortunate traveller. With ardent affections, and with thoughts beyond
her station and her years, she was not without that modest vanity which
made her painfully susceptible to her own deficiencies in beauty.
Instinctively conscious of how deeply she herself could love, she
believed it impossible that she could ever be so loved in return. The
stranger, so superior in her eyes to all she had yet seen, was the first
who had ever addressed her in that voice which by tones, not words,
speaks that admiration most dear to a woman's heart. To _him_ she was
beautiful, and her lovely mind spoke out, undimmed by the imperfections
of her face. Not, indeed, that Lucille was wholly without personal
attraction; her light step and graceful form were elastic with the
freshness of youth, and her mouth and smile had so gentle and tender an
expression, that there were moments when it would not have been the blind
only who would have mistaken her to be beautiful. Her early childhood
had indeed given the promise of attractions, which the smallpox, that
then fearful malady, had inexorably marred. It had not only seared the
smooth skin and brilliant hues, but utterly changed even the character of
the features. It so happened that Lucille's family were celebrated for
beauty, and vain of that celebrity; and so bitterly had her parents
deplored the effects of the cruel malady, that poor Lucille had been
early taught to consider them far more grievous than they really were,
and to exaggerate the advantages of that beauty, the loss of which was
considered by her parents so heavy a misfortune. Lucille, too, had a
cousin named Julie, who was the wonder of all Malines for her personal
perfections; and as the cousins were much together, the contrast was too
striking not to occasion frequent mortification to Lucille. But every
misfortune has something of a counterpoise; and the consciousness of
personal inferiority had meekened, without souring, her temper, had given
gentleness to a spirit that otherwise might have been too high, and
humility to a mind that was naturally strong, impassioned, and energetic.