The Clever Woman of the Family

"I have read in the marvellous heart of man, / That strange and mystic scroll, / That an army of phantoms vast and wan / Beleaguer the human soul. / "Encamped beside life's rushing stream, / In Fancy's misty light, / Gigantic shapes and shadows gleam / Portentous through the night. " / "The Beleaguered City," Longfellow

A dinner party at the Deanery in the sessions week was an institution, but Rachel, lying on the sofa in a cool room, had thought herself exempt from it, and was conscious for the time of but one wish, namely, to be let alone, and to be able to shut her eyes, without finding the lids, as it were, lined with tiers of gazing faces, and curious looks turned on her, and her ears from the echo of the roar of fury that had dreadfully terrified both her and her mother, and she felt herself to have merited! The crush of public censure was not at the moment so overwhelming as the strange morbid effect of having been the focus of those many, many glances, and if she reflected at all, it was with a weary speculating wonder whether one pair of dark grey eyes had been among those levelled at her. She thought that if they had, she could not have missed either their ironical sting, or perchance some kindly gleam of sympathy, such as had sometimes surprised her from under the flaxen lashes.