colored by a possibility of excitement like an undercurrent of hardly
perceptible fever. Her mother, it was true, took on herself most of the
duties of Barzil Dunsack's house; but there were still a large number of
little things that returned unvaried with every morning, noon and night
for the girl's attention. The cause of any impending excitement--except
the mere presence of Gerrit Ammidon in Salem, now surely of no moment to
her--she was unable to place. The feeling that pervaded her most was the
heavy conviction that her life was a complete waste, she had the
sensation of being condemned to stay in surroundings, in a service, that
never for a moment represented her desire or true capabilities. Her
family, as she had grown into maturity, seemed strange, her place there
an unhappy accident.

At her brightest periods she pictured being suddenly, arbitrarily,
removed into happier appropriate regions. For a time that vision had
assumed the tangible shape of Gerrit Ammidon; then this comfortable
figure had abruptly left her to an infinitely more seldom return of her
faint indefinite hope.

Through the inordinate number of hours when she was potentially alone she
had developed a strain of almost painful thought out of keeping with the
whole of her naturally unreflective being. In moments such as the
present--she was sitting in her room overlooking Hardy Street on its
landward reach--she followed the slow turnings of her mind in the manner
of a child spelling out a sentence. Two things seemed to her of the first
importance--the existence into which she had been forced by the
circumstance of her birth, and her unknown father himself: unknown, that
is, except for vague promptings and desires which, for need of a better
reason, she traced to his personality. That he was superior, in that he
had had a distinct measure of gentle blood, she was assured by her mother