"Something must be the matter—she was so altered."
"She supposed she had a right to alter at her ease. She knew she was plainer: if it suited her to grow ugly, why need others fret themselves on the subject?"
"There must be a cause for the change—what was it?"
She peremptorily requested to be let alone.
Then she would make every effort to appear quite gay, and she seemed indignant at herself that she could not perfectly succeed: brief, self-spurning epithets burst from her lips when alone: "Fool! Coward!" she would term herself. "Poltroon!" she would say, "if you must tremble—tremble in secret! Quail where no eye sees you!"
"How dare you"—she would ask herself—"how dare you show your weakness and betray your imbecile anxieties? Shake them off: rise above them: if you cannot do this, hide them."
And to hide them, she did her best. She once more became resolutely lively in company. When weary of effort and forced to relax, she sought solitude: not the solitude of her chamber—she refused to mope, shut up between four walls—but that wilder solitude which lies out of doors, and which she could chase, mounted on Zoë, her mare. She took long rides of half a day. Her uncle disapproved, but he dared not remonstrate: it was never pleasant to face Shirley's anger, even when she was healthy and
