" 'This is only a fit of temper she is passing through.'

"But it did not always pass away. When I spoke to her sometimes,
she would answer me, either with an air of affected indifference,
or in sullen anger; and she became by turns rude, impatient, and
nervous. For a time I never saw her except at meals, and we spoke
but little. I concluded, at length, that I must have offended her
in something: and, accordingly, I said to her one evening:

" 'Miss Harriet, why is it that you do not act toward me as
formerly? What have I done to displease you? You are causing me
much pain!'

"She responded, in an angry tone, in a manner altogether sui
generis:

" 'I am always with you the same as formerly. It is not true, not
true,' and she ran upstairs and shut herself up in her room.

"At times she would look upon me with strange eyes. Since that
time I have often said to myself that those condemned to death
must look thus when informed that their last day has come. In her
eye there lurked a species of folly, a folly at once mysterious
and violent--even more, a fever, an exasperated desire,
impatient, at once incapable of being realized and unrealizable!

"Nay, it seemed to me that there was also going on within her a
combat, in which her heart struggled against an unknown force
that she wished to overcome--perhaps, even, something else. But
what could I know? What could I know?