Carroll was entirely too confused to speak, but he was a physician, and could not help reflecting instantly upon the cause of this strange metamorphosis. He naturally thought of hypnotism, and he came in a second thought to realize that Alice had with amazing rapidity been sent into a hypnotic condition by looking for an instant at the glittering point on the wall of the house across the street. What the result might be, or what the words she spoke meant, he could not even conjecture.
“Don’t stare at me so,” the girl went on. “I’m Jenny.”
“Oh,” he repeated confusedly, “you’re Jenny?”
“Yes; I’m Jenny, and I’m worth six of that silly Alice you’re engaged to.”
He took her lightly by the shoulders and looked at her, quite as much for the sake of steadying his own nerves as from any expectation of learning anything by examination. Her eyes shone with an unwonted brightness, and seemed to him to gleam with an archness of which Alice would not have been capable. The cheeks were flushed, not feverishly, but healthily, and the girl had lost completely the appearance of exhaustion which had troubled him so long. The head was carried with a new erectness, and as he regarded her she tossed it saucily.
“You may look at me as much as you like,” she said gayly. “I can stand it. Don’t you think I am better looking than she is?”
He was convinced that Alice could not know what she was saying, yet he involuntarily cried out:—
“Don’t, Alice! I don’t like it!”
She pouted her lips, lips which to his excited fancy seemed to have grown redder and fuller than he had ever seen them, and she made a droll little grimace.