But when day came,
the enterprise no longer seemed so simple. Her scanty wardrobe struck
her with cowardice as she surveyed it. The broad daylight made
everything in the house seem poor and shabby. When she went
down-stairs, her heart sank within her as she entered the kitchen to
help her mother, and when she sat with the family at the breakfast-table,
she had no faith left in her dreams of the rosy midnight. This
alternation of feeling bred in her, in the course of a few days, a sort
of fever, which lent a singular beauty to her face, and a petulant tang
to her speech. She rose one morning, after a sleepless night, in a
state of anger and excitement in which she had little difficulty in
charging upon Farnham all responsibility for her trouble of mind.
"I won't stand it any longer," she said aloud in her chamber. "I shall
go to him this day and have it out. I shall ask him what he means by
treating me so."
She sat down by her bureau and began to crimp her hair with grim
resolution. Her mother came and knocked at her door. "I'm not coming to
breakfast, I've got a headache," she said, and added to herself, "I
sha'n't go down and get the smell of bacon on me this morning.
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