emed invariably to decide her opinion of them at once and for ever.
She liked or disliked people heartily; estimating them apparently
from considerations entirely irrespective of age, or sex, or personal
appearance. Sometimes, the very person who was thought certain to
attract her, proved to be absolutely repulsive to her--sometimes,
people, who, in Mr. Blyth's opinion, were sure to be unwelcome visitors
to Madonna, turned out, incomprehensibly, to be people whom she took
a violent liking to directly. She always betrayed her pleasure
or uneasiness in the society of others with the most diverting
candor--showing the extremest anxiety to conciliate and attract those
whom she liked; running away and hiding herself like a child, from those
whom she disliked. There were some unhappy people, in this latter class,
whom no persuasion could ever induce her to see a second time.

She could never give any satisfactory account of how she proceeded in
forming her opinions of others. The only visible means of arriving at
them, which her deafness and dumbness permitted her to use, consisted
simply in examination of a stranger's manner, expression, and play of
features at a first interview. This process, however, seemed always
amply sufficient for her; and in more than one instance events proved
that her judgment had not been misled by it. Her affliction had tended,
indeed, to sharpen her faculties of observation and her powers of
analysis to such a remarkable degree, that she often guessed the general
tenor of a conversation quite correctly, merely by watching the minute
varieties of expression and gesture in the persons speaking--fixing her
attention always with especial intentness on the changeful and rapid
motions of their lips.

Exiled alike from the worlds of sound and speech, the poor girl's
enjoyment of all that she could still gain of happiness, by means of the
seeing sense that was left her, was hardly conceivable to her speaking
and hearing fellow-creatures. All beautiful sights, and particularly the
exquisite combinations that Nature presents, filled her with an artless
rapture, which it affected the most unimpressible people to witness.
Trees were beyond all other objects the greatest luxuries that her eyes
could enjoy. She would sit for hours, on fresh summer evenings, watching
the mere waving of the leaves; her face flushed, her whole nervous
organization trembling with the sensations of deep and perfect happiness
which