And then her laugh! Tears
may be inopportune enough, when they come
out of time, but laughter is far worse; and when
poor Aasa once burst out into a ringing laughter
in church, and that while the minister was
pronouncing the benediction, it was only with
the greatest difficulty that her father could
prevent the indignant congregation from seizing
her and carrying her before the sheriff for
violation of the church-peace. Had she been poor
and homely, then of course nothing could have
saved her; but she happened to be both rich
and beautiful, and to wealth and beauty much
is pardoned. Aasa's beauty, however, was also
of a very unusual kind; not the tame sweetness
so common in her sex, but something of the
beauty of the falcon, when it swoops down upon
the unwatchful sparrow or soars round the lonely
crags; something of the mystic depth of the
dark tarn, when with bodeful trembling you
gaze down into it, and see its weird traditions
rise from its depth and hover over the pine-tops
in the morning fog. Yet, Aasa was not dark;
her hair was as fair and yellow as a wheat-field
in August, her forehead high and clear, and her
mouth and chin as if cut with a chisel; only her
eyes were perhaps somewhat deeper than is
common in the North, and the longer you
looked at them the deeper they grew, just like
the tarn, which, if you stare long enough into
it, you will find is as deep as the heavens above,
that is, whose depth only faith and fancy can
fathom.
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