Sleeping Fires by Gertrude Atherton

When people returned to town they were astonished at the change in Madeleine Talbot, especially after a summer in the city that would have "torn their own nerves out by the roots. " More than one had wondered anxiously if she were going into the decline so common in those days. They had known the cause of the broken spring, but none save the incurably sanguine opined that Howard Talbot had mended it. But mended it was and her eyes had never sparkled so gaily, nor her laugh rung so lightly since her first winter among them. Mrs. McLane suggested charitably that her tedium vitae had run its course and she was become a philosopher.

But Madeleine _reviva_ did not suggest the philosopher to the most charitable eye (not even to Mrs. McLane's), particularly as there was a "something" about her -- was it repressed excitement? -- which had been quite absent from her old self, however vivacious.