He thought it all over now as he sat looking out of Mrs. Clay's eastern bay-window. And having thought it over once, it began to go through his mind again, and still again. The various scenes passed, one by one, slowly, like persons in a procession, and he gazed at them from first to last; and there was the first again! He had had enough of it, but it would not stop. His head was aching, and feeling somewhat light besides. He pressed his forehead with his hands, and tried to think of something else, even if it were no more pleasant subject than the cold he must have taken to make him so sore from head to foot. But still that procession moved with accelerating speed. He spoke to John, tired and annoyed himself a little with the creature's antics, then leaned back in his chair, and let his brain whirl.
Certainly he was ill; but nothing else was certain. Whether to go or stay, to speak or remain silent, he could scarcely decide. When dinner was announced, instinct kept him conventional. He ate nothing, but he went through all the proper forms, with no more abstraction than might be attributed to his intellectual oddities. But dinner, with its inanities, over, he made haste to escape to his own room.
“Going out for a walk, cousin?” asked Mrs. Clay, as he passed her.
How the trivial question irritated him! He bowed, afraid to utter a word, lest it should be an offensive one. His nerves felt bare, his teeth on edge.
Miss Bird looked more deeply than her friend had, and in the one timid glance she gave the gentleman saw a painful trouble underneath his cool exterior.
“I hope he didn't hear what we were saying of him before dinner,” she remarked apprehensively.
“No, indeed!” was the confident response. “He scarcely hears what you say to him, still less what is said of him.”
“But he looked displeased,” persisted the anxious Bird.
Mrs. Clay cast a sarcastic glance on her subordinate. “My dear,” she said with decision, “the less you occupy yourself with my cousin's feelings, the better for you. Your solicitude will be quite thrown away.”
Bird sighed faintly, and resigned herself to being snubbed.