To be charged with an unnatural and monstrous crime, at the very name of which her pure heart shuddered;—to be hunted like a wild beast;—to be hiding like a burrowing fox;—the situation was terrible in its danger; but oh, how much more terrible in its degradation! And through all her own personal consciousness of wrong, shame, sorrow, and peril, two questions continually forced themselves upon her attention:
Who was the poisoner of her uncle’s family?
What was the motive for the fell deed?
Although the last two days had been a season of unexampled distress, excitement, and fatigue—and although for the last three nights she had not once closed her eyes in slumber—yet she could not now rest for one moment in her chair.
She started up with her hands pressed to her throbbing and burning temples, and with a distracted manner and irregular steps paced the floor.
One of the most perplexing elements in her misery was that she could not adequately comprehend her own situation. She understood “a horror” in her state, but not her state. Knowing her own innocence, it seemed to her absolutely incredible that every one else should not know it also, and monstrous that any one should suspect her of crime, and especially of such an atrocious crime. She could not fully credit the fidelity of her own memory, the evidence of her own experience, or the testimony of her own senses. She was haunted with a vague suspicion that this was all a frightful dream, from which she should presently awake in surprise and joy.
This distrust of the actual is a dangerous state of mind, being the intermediate stage between the last extremity of mental suffering and the insanity to which it tends. Just as the wretched girl was beginning to lose herself in these metaphysical miseries the real world broke in upon her with the voice of her landlady, who was heard outside the door, saying:
“Here, Charley, set down the box; I’ll take it in myself; and now you go, like a clever boy, and mind the shop till I come.”
There was a sound of the box set down upon the floor and of the retreat of Charley down the stairs, and then a rap at the door.
“Come in,” said Eudora, pausing in her walk.