at least not to have
their taste offended, the business of parents is rather to hope.

After her daughter's departure, however, she had to be pained in a
singular and unlooked-for manner, in finding that, not so much through
what there really was objectionable in her behavior, as through what was
good and praiseworthy in it, she had left an ill report of herself
behind her. Luciana seemed to have prescribed it as a rule to herself
not only to be merry with the merry, but miserable with the miserable;
and in order to give full swing to the spirit of contradiction in her,
often to make the happy, uncomfortable, and the sad, cheerful. In every
family among whom she came, she inquired after such members of it as
were ill or infirm, and unable to appear in society. She would go to see
them in their rooms, enact the physician, and insist on prescribing
powerful doses for them out of her own traveling medicine-chest, which
she constantly took with her in her carriage; her attempted cures, as
may be supposed, either succeeding or failing as chance happened to
direct.

In this sort of benevolence she was thoroughly cruel, and would listen
to nothing that was said to her, because she was convinced that she was
managing admirably. One of these attempts of hers on the moral side
failed very disastrously, and this it was which gave Charlotte so much
trouble, inasmuch as it involved consequences and every one was talking
about it. She never had heard of the story till Luciana was gone;
Ottilie, who had made one of the party present at the time, had to give
her a circumstantial account of it.

One of several daughters of a family of rank had the misfortune to have
caused the death of one of her younger sisters; it had destroyed her
peace of mind, and she had never been properly herself since. She lived
in her own room, occupying herself and keeping quiet; and she could only
bear to see the members of her own family when they came one by one. If
there were several together, she suspected at once that they were making
reflections upon her, and upon her condition. To each of them singly she
would speak rationally enough, and talk freely for an hour at a time.

Luciana had heard of this, and had secretly determined with herself, as
soon as she got into the house, that she would forthwith work a miracle,
and restore the young lady to society. She conducted herself in the
matter more prudently than usual, managed to introduce herself alo