But the effect
produced upon Annie by the contents of the letter was very different.
Hitherto she had looked up to Alec as a great strong creature. Her
faith in him had been unquestioning and unbounded. Even his
wrong-doings had not impressed her with any sense of his weakness. But
now, rejected and disgraced, his mother dissatisfied, his friend
disappointed, and himself foiled in the battle of life, he had fallen
upon evil days, and all the woman in Annie rose for his defence. In a
moment they had changed places in the world of her moral imagination.
The strong youth was weak and defenceless: the gentle girl opened the
heart almost of motherhood, to receive and shelter the worn outraged
man. A new tenderness, a new pity took possession of her. Indignant
with Kate, angry with the professors, ready to kiss the hands of Mr
Cupples, all the tenderness of her tender nature gathered about her
fallen hero, and she was more like his wife defending him from _her_
mother. Now she could be something if not to him yet for him. He had
been a "bright particular star" "beyond her sphere," but now the star
lay in the grass, shorn of its beams, and she took it to her bosom.
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