If you had been present with your long
face, the occasion would have been one of oppressive solemnity. Ik
appeared as dejected as if he were to be executed before dinner,
and scarcely ate a mouthful; I never saw a fellow so changed in all
my life. Although your artist friend had a rapt, absorbed look,
he was still able to absorb a good deal of steak and coffee. I
saw him and Miss Burton emerge from a private parlor last night,
and he probably understands Miss Burton's malady better than the
rest of us. Why--what's the matter? Would to heaven I understood
your malady better! Are you sick?"
"Yes," said Ida, rising abruptly from the table, "I am sick--sick
of myself, sick of the world."
"Good gracious!" exclaimed Mrs. Mayhew, sharply, "are you so wrapt
up in that fellow Sibley, that you can't live without him?"
Ida made a slight but expressive gesture of protest and disgust;
then said, in a low tone, as if to herself: "If my own mother so
misjudges me, what can I expect of others?"
Mrs. Mayhew followed her daughter to her room with a perplexed and
worried look.
"Ida," she began, "you are all out of sorts; you are bilious; you've
got this horrid malaria, that the doctors are always talking about,
in your system.
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