Page:Life and life-work of Mother Theodore Guerin Foundress.djvu/43

Rh in a most precarious condition. Apart from tender care, unusual tact was necessary to save her from more threatening perils; this her daughter manifested in an admirable degree, a grace that she acknowledged to be the fruit of her constant and earnest prayer.

Mademoiselle Guérin showed none of those variations usual to the developing years of maidenhood — rapid transitions from sober judgment to fickle thought with as quick returns to unexpected seriousness. Her conduct was uniformly steady, her absorbing thought being of her mother. Her devotedness was more than filial, it was heroic; and the cheerfulness of her disposition left very little room for suspecting that she realized the responsibility resting upon her, or that she ever fancied she could be happier in circumstances other than those in which she was then placed. Her life at this time exemplified most truly how "the heart that goes out of itself gets large and full of joy." This admirable disposition in the daughter had a soothing and restorative effect on the mother, who gradually, though slowly, returned from the gates of death. It also gained the sympathy of many warm-hearted friends, but they could only proffer kindliness; for the delicacy often felt by persons of refined and noble sentiment suffering reverses raises a barrier around their situation that cannot be crossed by the most tactful without inflicting deeper wounds.

"There distils a virtue out of sorrow," writes Faber, "wherein are born sympathies, and gentle moods, and little self-denials, and chaste joys." These were the fruits of Mademoiselle Guérin's early years, and they gained for her a wide circle of admiring friends.