turn quickly aside,
that my change of countenance may not be perceived.

"Did he get out there?" I ask, faintly.

"Mrs. Huntley was at the gate, my lady, and Sir Roger got down to speak
to her, and bid James drive on and tell your ladyship he would be here
directly."

"Very well," say I, unsteadily, still averting my face, "that will do."

He is gone, and I need no longer mind what color my face is, nor what
shape of woeful jealousy my late so complacent features assume.

So _this_ is what comes of thinking life such a grand and pleasant
thing, and this world such a lovely, satisfying paradise! Wait long
enough--(I have not had to wait very long for my part)--and every sweet
thing turns to gall-like bitterness between one's teeth! The experience
of a few days ago might have taught me _that_, one would think, but I
was dull to thick-headedness. I required _two_ lessons--the second, oh
how far harsher than even the first!

In a moment I have taken my resolution. I am racing up-stairs. I have
reached my room. I do not summon my maid. One requires no assistance to
enable one to _un_build, deface, destroy. In a _second_--in much less
time than it takes me to write it--I have torn off the mob-cap, and
thrown it on the floor. If I had done what I wished, if I had yielded to
my first impulse, I should also have trampled upon it; but from the
extremity of petulance, I am proud to be able to tell you that I
refrain. With rapid fingers I unbutton my blue-velvet gown, and step out
of it, leaving it in a costly heap on the floor. Then I open the high
folding-doors of the wardrobe, and run my eye over its contents; but the
most becoming is no longer what I seek. For a moment or two I stand
undecided, then my eye is caught by a venerable garment, loathly and
ill-made, which I had before I married, and have since kept, more as a
relic than any thing else--a gown of that peculiar shade of sallow,
bilious, Bismarck brown, which is the most trying to the paleness of my
skin. Before any one could say "Jack Robinson," it is down, and I am in
it. Then, without even a parting smooth to the hair, which the violent
off-tearing of my cap must have roughened and disheveled, I go
down-stairs and reenter the boudoir. As I do so, I catch an accidental
glimpse of myself in a glass. Good Heavens! Can three minutes (for I
really have not been longer about it) have wrought such a monstrous
metamorphosis? Is every woman as utterly dependent for her