CHAPTER XIV
Through the long night Mariana lay with her hands clasped upon her breast and her eyes upon the ceiling. The electric light, sifting through the filmy curtains at the windows, cast spectral shadows over the pale-green surface. Sometimes the shadows, tracing the designs on the curtains, wreathed themselves into outlines of large poplar leaves and draped the chandeliers, and again they melted to indistinguishable dusk, leaving a vivid band of light around the cornice.
She did not stir, but she slept little.
In the morning, when Miss Ramsey came to her bedside, there was a flush in her face and she appeared stronger than she had done since her illness.
"Is it clear?" she asked, excitedly. "If it is clear, I must go out. I feel as if I were caged."
Miss Ramsey raised the shades, revealing the murky aspect of a variable day.
"It is not quite clear," she answered. "I don't think you had better venture out. There is a damp wind."
"Very well," responded Mariana. She rose and dressed herself hurriedly; then she sat down with Miss Ramsey to breakfast, but she had little appetite, and soon left the table, to wander about the house with a nervous step.
"I can't settle myself," she said, a little pettishly.
Going up-stairs to her room presently, she threw herself into a chair before the fire, and looked into the long mirror hanging on the opposite wall.