"
Thus he blinded himself in these vain, silly vaporings, the result
of a false training and the reading of stilted romances. The thought
of studying the girl's character, of doing and being in some degree
what would be agreeable to her, never occurred to him. That kind of
good sense rarely does occur to the egotistical, who often fairly
exasperate those whom they would please by utter blindness to the
simple things which ARE pleasing. Miss Lou had read more old
romances than he, but she speedily outgrew the period in which she
was carried away by the fantastic heroes described. They became in
her fancy the other extreme of the matter-of-fact conditions in
which her uncle and aunt had lived, and as we have seen, she longed
to know the actual world, to meet with people who did not seem alien
to her young and natural sympathies. Each new character she met
became a kind of revelation to her. She was the opposite pole of the
society belle, whose eyes have wearied of humanity, who knows little
and cares less for anything except her mirrored image.
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