Day after day she crouched
there, peeping out under the lowered shade with hungry eyes. The dreary
street below offered no diversion; sometimes a funeral procession dragged
its way past, but for the most part there was nothing to see save an
occasional delivery wagon or a staid pedestrian.
She was at that critical time of transition between the romance of
childhood, when she had become vaguely aware of the desire of the spirit,
and the romance of youth, when she was to know to the full the desires
of the flesh. It was a period of sudden, intense moods, followed by
spells of languor. Something new and strange and incommunicable was
fermenting within her, and nothing was being done to direct those
mysterious forces. She was affectionate, with no outlet for her
affection; romantic, with nothing for romance to feed upon.
The one resource lay in the bookcase that rose above the old-fashioned
secretary in Miss Bobinet's front hall. She had discovered it on the day
of her arrival and, choosing a volume at random, had become so engrossed
in the doings of one of Ouida's heroes, that she had failed to hear Miss
Bobinet's call. From that time on she was forbidden to take any books
away from the bookcase, an order which she got around by standing beside
it and eagerly devouring bits at a time.
The monotony of the days she might have endured if there had been any
relief at the close of them. But when she returned home there was always
endless work to be done.
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