Why of all others she loved this man, and how it all had come about,
was a mystery that puzzled her sorely; but she had no labyrinthine
heart in which to play hide and seek with her own consciousness.
And so vividly conscious was she now of this new and absorbing
passion, that she hastily turned her face from her companions toward
the cloudy sky, that looked as dark to her as it had to Jennie
Burton, and for a moment sought desperately to recover from a dizzy,
reeling sense of pain that was well-nigh overwhelming. Then the
womanly instinct to hide her secret asserted itself, and a moment
later her laugh jarred discordantly on Van Berg's ears, and he
interpreted it as wisely as have thousands of others who fail to
recognize the truth that often no cry of pain is so bitter as a
reckless laugh.
A little later, however, her companions missed her. Later still
her mother sought admission to her room in vain.
When she came down to breakfast the next morning, she was very
quiet and self-possessed, but her face was so pale and the traces
of suffering were so manifest, that her mother insisted that she
was not well.
She coldly admitted the fact.
The voluble lady launched out into an indefinite number of questions
and suggestions of remedies.
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