No doubt Elizabeth felt so for her part. She had gone to her own room, where she put herself on a low seat by the window and sat with labouring breath and heaving bosom, and the fire in her heart and in her eyes glowing still, though she looked now as if it were more likely to consume herself than anybody else. If herself was not present to her thoughts, they were busy with nothing then present; but the fire burned.
While she sat there, Clam came in, now one of the smartest of gay-turbaned handmaidens, and began an elaborate dusting of the apartment. She began at the door, and by the time she had worked round to Elizabeth at the window, she had made by many times a more careful survey of her mistress than of any piece of furniture in the room. Elizabeth's head had drooped; and her eyes were looking, not vacantly, but with no object in view, out of the window.
"I guess you want my friend here just now, Miss 'Lizabeth," said Clam, her lips parting just enough to show the line of white between them.
"Whom do you mean by your friend?"
"O — Governor Landholm, to be sure — he used to fix everybody straight whenever he come home to Wuttle Quttle."
Elizabeth passed over the implication that she wanted 'fixing,' and asked, "How? —"
"I don' know. He used to put 'em all in order, in less'n no time," said Clam, going over and over the dressing-table with her duster, as that piece of furniture kept her near her mistress. "Mis' Landholm used to get her face straight the minute his two feet sounded outside the house, and she'd keep it up as long as he stayed; and Winifred stopped to be queer and behaved like a Christian; and nobody else in the house hadn't a chance to take airs but himself."
"What sort of airs did he take?" said Elizabeth.
"O I don' know," said Clam; — "his sort; — they wa'n't like nobody else's sort."
"But what do you mean by airs?"