Despairing, hopeless, her cheeks burning with shame as with a fever,
she sat hour after hour refusing to see any one. She would not go
down to supper. She left the food untasted that was sent to her
room. She sat staring at vacancy until her face became a dim pale
outline in the deepening twilight, and finally was lost in the
shadow of night. But the darkness that gathered around the poor
girl's heart was deeper and almost akin to the rayless gloom that
positive crime creates, so nearly did she feel that she was associated
with one from whom her woman's soul, perverted as it was, shrank
with inexpressible loathing.
"Ida is in one of her worst tantrums," whispered Mrs. Mayhew to
Stanton; "I never knew her to act so badly as she has of late. I
wouldn't have thought that such a man as you have found Sibley to
be could gain so great a hold upon her feelings. But law! she'll
be all over it in a day or two. Nothing lasts with Ida, and least
of all, a beau."
"Well," said Stanton, bitterly, "she is disgracing herself and all
related to her by her inexcusable folly in this instance. Those
who pretended to be Sibley's friends at dinner, are now trying to
win a little respectability by turning against him, and the story
of his behavior is circulating through the house.
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