softened

Have you really committed the crimes of which you are accused?’ The count looked around him with an expression which might have softened tigers, but which could not disarm his judges.

Marilla looked at Anne and softened at sight of the child’s pale face with its look of mute misery--the misery of a helpless little creature who finds itself once more caught in the trap from which it had escaped.

Every idea that had been brought forward by the housekeeper was favourable to his character; and as she stood before the canvas, on which he was represented, and fixed his eyes upon herself, she thought of his regard with a deeper sentiment of gratitude than it had ever raised before: she remembered its warmth, and softened its impropriety of expression.

Her resentment, which to other and older people might be as laughable as its cause, was in no whit allayed and softened by time seemingly.