The Statue in the Wood

still, in some sort, to be, bewitched. How else could she explain her amazing conduct? What she had done was so unlike her. Never in her life had she yielded to strange impulses. It might almost be said that never in her life had strange impulses beset her. Orthodox was a word of those days: she was orthodox. Yet the change which she was conscious of in herself she did not wholly deprecate. She had been bound; she was free. Impossible not to experience some relief at deliverance even from restraints imperfectly realized. Was she free? She could only have said that she felt herself free. Had there been restraints? If not, why this sense of freedom? Which was only to argue in a circle as Branton her maid might have argued, or Mrs. Piper in the housekeeper's room. She certainly saw things newly. Her boudoir ? which she even called her boudoir ? suddenly displeased her. She had been delighted with it up tothen, secretly preferring it to the beautiful Adam drawing-room which she had always found too austere for her taste. Now she saw her own satin- panelled room as vulgar. All that she had admired in it lost its charm. There was too much of everything; too much blue satin, too many sunk buttons in the elaborate upholstery of chairs and sofas, too much gold, too many curves, too many photographs and photograph frames. There was a portrait in crayons on porcelain of herself which had been her special pleasure ? in evening dress, a fan, a bouquet, white kid gloves. As ...