"I should be comforted if I
could think that you were speaking from your heart; but I fear that you
are not--I fear that you are not! Oh, may that heart be melted! may you
be brought to see the peril of your evil ways!" Followed by this devout
prayer, Ida went up to her room. As she paced up and down she tried to
tell herself that the whole thing was too ridiculous, was too much like
a farce to make her wretched; but she felt unutterably miserable, and
she knew that she could no longer endure Laburnum Villa and the petty
tyranny and vindictiveness of these relations.
Poverty, hardship, she could have borne patiently and without
complaining; but there are some things more intolerable to a
high-spirited girl, such as Ida, than poverty or physical
hardship--there are some things which hurt more than actual blows. She
felt stifling, choking; she knew that, happen what might, she could not
remain under her cousin's roof, eat the bread of his charity, for
another day. She shuddered as she pictured herself meeting them at the
breakfast-table, facing Mrs. Heron's spiteful face, Isabel's
tear-swollen eyes, and her cousin John's sanctimonious sermon.
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