But
Joy's sweet and trustful nature had received a great shock in the
knowledge of the shadow which hung about her birth. Where formerly
she had expected love and appreciation from everyone she met, she now
shrank from forming new ties, lest new hurts should await her.
She was like a flower in whose perfect heart a worm had coiled. Her
entire feeling about life had undergone a change. For many weeks
after her self-imposed exile, she had been unable to think of her
mother without a mingled sense of shame and resentment; the adoring
love she had borne this being seemed to die with her respect. After
a time the bitterness of this sentiment wore away, and a pitying
tenderness and sorrow took its place; but from her heart the twin
angels, Love and Forgiveness, were absent. She read her mother's
manuscript over, and tried to argue herself into the philosophy which
had sustained the author of her being through all these years.
But her mind was shaped far more after the conventional pattern of
her paternal ancestors, who had been New England Puritans, and she
could not view the subject as Berene had viewed it.
In spite of the ideality which her mother had woven about him, Joy
entertained the most bitter contempt for the unknown man who was her
father, and the whole tide of her affections turned lavishly upon the
memory of Mr Irving, whom she felt now more than ever so worthy of
her regard.
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