“Very,” she answered in kind, forgetting her brother and the whole terrible situation.
“Tell me what you thought of me,” he said, and he came a little nearer to her, looking very handsome and very strong. “I should like to know.”
“I said I should never speak to you again.”
“And you kept your word,” said Jeff. “Well, that's all right. Good-night-or good-morning, whichever it is.” He took her hand, which she could not withdraw, or feigned to herself that she could not withdraw, and looked at her with a silent laugh, and a hardy, sceptical glance that she felt take in every detail of her prettiness, her plainness. Then he turned and went out, and she ran quickly and locked the door upon him.
XXXV.
Bessie crept up to her room, where she spent the rest of the night in her chair, amid a tumult of emotion which she would have called thinking. She asked herself the most searching questions, but she got no very candid answers to them, and she decided that she must see the whole fact with some other's eyes before she could know what she had meant or what she had done.
When she let the daylight into her room, it showed her a face in her mirror that bore no trace of conflicting anxieties. Her complexion favored this effect of inward calm; it was always thick; and her eyes seemed to her all the brighter for their vigils.
A smile, even, hovered on her mouth as she sat down at the breakfast-table, in the pretty negligee she had worn all night, and poured out Miss Lynde's coffee for her.
“That's always very becoming to you, Bessie,” said her aunt. “It's the nicest breakfast gown you have.”