The next day—the day, the week, the fortnight after—this new and peculiar shadow lingered on the countenance, in the manner of Miss Keeldar. A strange quietude settled over her look, her movements, her very voice. The alteration was not so marked as to court or permit frequent questioning, yet it was there, and it would not pass away. It hung over her like a cloud which no breeze could stir or disperse. Soon it became evident that to notice this change was to annoy her. First she shrank from remark; and, if persisted in, she, with her own peculiar hauteur, repelled it. "Was she ill?" The reply came with decision.
"I am not."
"Did anything weigh on her mind? Had anything happened to affect her spirits?"
She scornfully ridiculed the idea. "What did they mean by spirits? She had no spirits, black or white, blue or gray, to affect."
"Something must be the matter—she was so altered."
"She supposed she had a right to alter at her ease. She knew she was plainer. If it suited her to grow ugly, why need others fret themselves on the subject?"
"There must be a cause for the change. What was it?"
She peremptorily requested to be let alone.
Then she would make every effort to appear quite gay, and she seemed indignant at herself that she could not perfectly succeed. Brief self-spurning epithets burst from her lips when alone. "Fool! coward!" she would term herself. "Poltroon!" she would say, "if you must tremble, tremble in secret! Quail where no eye sees you!"
"How dare you," she would ask herself—"how dare you show your weakness and betray your imbecile anxieties? Shake them off; rise above them. If you cannot do this, hide them."