hatred of a few clear-sighted opponents, but most persons only ridiculed her, contemptuously wondering why she should pursue this course when her interest lay so clearly the other way. But she was now far beyond the reach of such weapons. 'I have given you, thus, a sketch of the history and character of Laetitia, but I cannot reproduce her as she appears to my own mind. You must fill up the outlines from your own personal knowledge. I fear I have rendered her too intense, and, perhaps, too sombre. Intense she certainly was, but it did not oppress one in ordinary intercourse; and she was not at all sombre. After she recovered fully from her youthful grief, her elasticity of temperament returned, and her love of fun. She looked on the bright side of all things, and was full of encouragement and hope for her friends. To me, besides being, during the last five years particularly, a valuable friend and adviser--no one but myself can know how valuable--she was always an interesting companion. And yet she was not generally liked. She was seldom understood. Her life was so deep, her tone of thought so peculiar; and her dependence upon the opinions of others so slight, that persons ordinarily could not 'make her out,' as they said. Still she had very warm friends, and derived great pleasure from their friendship. I have never seen any one derive more. But she distrusted strangers; I mean their interest in her. She did not expect new persons to care for her, and it took her a long while to be sure that they did. I must myself confess, for the first and last time, that until within two or three years I never met her after an absence without being newly impressed with her exceeding homeliness. It was a sin against friendship, I knew, and I was glad when I felt I was free from it.' 'It was not so with me,' I said. 'After I became accustomed to her face it never affected me unpleasantly. I did not see the features, but the spirit which animated them.' 'Yes, you were with her continually, and, besides, she must have been so completely identified in your mind with the relief of pain, that you could think of her only as an angel of mercy. It was a great advantage to her that she was always scrupulously neat in her dress and person; and her clothes, too, were well put on, if without a great deal of taste. 'Upon the whole, her life was a happy one, though not perhaps triumphant except in periods of exaltation, for there was a large part of her nature unsatisfied; but she was thoroughly contented, willingly living as long as was necessary, glad to go whenever the time came. She never expected to die young, but she did; she was only thirty-six.' 'She seemed older,' I said. 'Yes, she always looked older than she was, and then she had lived so much that she necessarily impressed one as being old.