Wyn started violently, and faced slowly round. Her eyes wore a dull look, as if she was not quite fully awake.
"I don't think I was thinking of anything in particular," said she, sitting down listlessly and taking up her work, which lay on a table near. Miss Ellen watched her keenly, as she turned the embroidery this way and that, smoothed it with her hand, threaded a needle with silk as if she felt that some pretence of employment was necessary, but, after five minutes' spasmodic working, let it drop idly in her lap, leaned back in her chair, and again became apathetic.
It was disheartening indeed to watch her.
Miss Ellen recalled the energetic, slender Wynifred of last summer, with her eager, vivid interest in everything, her ready tongue, her gay laugh, her quick fingers.
How could the girl tell at what precise amount of work she would have to stop short? How should she recognise the signs of overfatigue? To spur herself on had been her only care,—to check her cravings for rest and leisure, as something to be crushed down and despised.
Now she was like a clock with damaged works. If you shook her, she would go fitfully for a few minutes, and then relapse into her former lethargy.
Of course, the completeness of her breakdown had been greatly aggravated by her own private unhappiness, and by the terrible trouble of her brother's total inability to stand up against his reverse of fortune. It seemed as if the consciousness of Osmond's utter weakness had sapped all her strength, had struck away her last prop. From such a depth of sickness and depression, she would, naturally take some time to re-ascend. Miss Ellen comforted herself with the thought that her cure must be gradual, but she could not feel that it had yet so much as begun.
Wynifred could not be made to talk on any subject except the sun, the flowers, the chough, the villagers, or some such indifferent theme. To talk about books made her head ache, she said, and she never put pen to paper. Hilda had now and then tried her, by casually leaving writing materials about in the room where she sat; but, alone or in company, she never touched them.
She spoke of no one and asked after no one but Osmond, and of him she would now and then speak, though never mentioning Elsa, or anyone else connected with the episodes preceding her illness.
Miss Ellen watched her daily with a tenderness and penetration which were touching to behold. The whole of her gentle heart went out to the girl, the deepest depth of whose malady she hardly guessed. She had an idea that what was wanted was the sight of some thing or person vividly recalling the trouble, whatever it was, which had made such an impression. She believed that a moment of excitement, even if painful, would break up the dull crust of indifference, and bring relief, even if it should flow in tears. But she had not clue enough to go upon in order to bring such a thing about; and Hilda was profoundly ignorant of her sister's secretly-cherished love-affair.