She was in a state of acute indecision.
Could she retire from this contest without endangering her authority,
without loss of prestige, or must she insist? She had no real wish to
hasten to her ex-pupil's bedside. She would be glad to put off doing so,
glad to wait. She was conscious of resentment rather than affection. And
she felt afraid, unformulated suspicion, unformulated dread, again
dogging her. That Damaris was really ill, she did not believe for an
instant. Damaris had excellent health. The maids exaggerated. They
delighted in making mysteries. Uneducated persons are always absurdly
greedy of disaster, lugubriously credulous.--Yes, on the whole she
concluded to maintain her original attitude, the attitude of yesterday
and this morning; concluded it would be more telling to keep up the
fiction of disgrace--because--Theresa did not care to scrutinize her own
motives or analyse her own thought too closely. She was afraid, and she
was jealous--jealous of Damaris' beauty, of the great love borne her by
her father, jealous of the fact that a young man--hadn't she, Theresa,
seen the young sea-captain once or twice in the village recently and been
fluttered by his notable good looks?--had rescued the girl, and carried
her home, carried her up here across the landing and along the familiar
schoolroom passage, with its patterned Chinese wall-paper, gently and
carefully, in his arms.
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