Sitting with her
father and mother, silence all at once fell upon the room, and
everything was transfigured in a ghostly light. Distinctly she saw
her mother throw her head back and raise to her throat what seemed
to be a sharp, glistening piece of steel; then came a cry, and all
was darkened before her eyes in a rush of crimson mist. The cry she
had herself uttered, much to her parents' alarm; what her mother
held was in reality only a paper-knife, with which she had been
tapping her lips in thought. A slight attack of illness followed on
this disturbance, and it was some days before she recovered from the
shock; she kept to herself, however, the horrible picture which her
imagination had conjured up.
She began to pay more frequent visits to her aunt Theresa, whom at
first she had seen very seldom. There was not the old confidence
between them. Maud shrank from any direct reference to the change in
herself, and Miss Bygrave spoke no word which could suggest a
comparison between past and present. Maud tried once more to draw
near to the pale, austere woman, whose life ever remained the same.
She was not repelled, but neither did any movement respond to her
yearning.
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