Thus coarsely does the world translate all finer griefs that meet its
eye. It is more a coarse world than an unkind one.
But Hilda sought nothing either from the world's delicacy or its pity,
and never dreamed of its misinterpretations. Her doves often flew in
through the windows of the tower, winged messengers, bringing her what
sympathy they could, and uttering soft, tender, and complaining sounds,
deep in their bosoms, which soothed the girl more than a distincter
utterance might. And sometimes Hilda moaned quietly among the doves,
teaching her voice to accord with theirs, and thus finding a temporary
relief from the burden of her incommunicable sorrow, as if a little
portion of it, at least, had been told to these innocent friends, and
been understood and pitied.
When she trimmed the lamp before the Virgin's shrine, Hilda gazed at
the sacred image, and, rude as was the workmanship, beheld, or fancied,
expressed with the quaint, powerful simplicity which sculptors sometimes
had five hundred years ago, a woman's tenderness responding to her
gaze. If she knelt, if she prayed, if her oppressed heart besought the
sympathy of divine womanhood afar in bliss, but not remote, because
forever humanized by the memory of mortal griefs, was Hilda to be
blamed? It was not a Catholic kneeling at an idolatrous shrine, but a
child lifting its tear-stained face to seek comfort from a mother.