"
But with the exception of a promptness to check all reference to
herself and the day's experiences, her manner was so different from
what Mrs. Mayhew had been accustomed to, that she could not help
turning many perplexed and curious glances toward her daughter,
and was evidently no better able to understand the subtle and yet
real change than was the artist himself.
Miss Burton, with her keen, delicate perceptions, recognized this
difference more fully than any of the others; and her instinct, rather
than anything she saw in Ida, enabled her to divine the cause in
part. "I know of but one thing that can account for Miss Mayhew's
behavior," she thought, "and though she guards her secret well,
she cannot deceive a woman who has passed through my experience.
I begin to see it all. She used Sibley as a blind, and she was
blind herself, poor child, when she did so, to everything save the
one womanly necessity of hiding an unsought love. Well, well, my
outspoken lover has eyes for her sweet, chastened beauty to-night.
Perhaps he thinks he is studying her face as an artist. Perhaps he
is. But it strikes me that he has lost the critical and judicial
expression which I have noticed hitherto," and a glimmer of a smile
that did not in the least suggest the "green-eyed monster" hovered
for a moment like a ray of light over Jennie Burton's face.
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