Page 229 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

Chapter 17

She was not praying; she was trembling—trembling all
over. Vibration was easy to her, was in fact too constant
with her, and she found herself now humming like a smit-
ten harp. She only asked, however, to put on the cover, to
case herself again in brown holland, but she wished to re-
sist her excitement, and the attitude of devotion, which she
kept for some time, seemed to help her to be still. She in-
tensely rejoiced that Caspar Goodwood was gone; there was
something in having thus got rid of him that was like the
payment, for a stamped receipt, of some debt too long on
her mind. As she felt the glad relief she bowed her head a lit-
tle lower; the sense was there, throbbing in her heart; it was
part of her emotion, but it was a thing to be ashamed of—it
was profane and out of place. It was not for some ten min-
utes that she rose from her knees, and even when she came
back to the sitting-room her tremor had not quite subsided.
It had had, verily, two causes: part of it was to be accounted
for by her long discussion with Mr. Goodwood, but it might
be feared that the rest was simply the enjoyment she found
in the exercise of her power. She sat down in the same chair
again and took up her book, but without going through the
form of opening the volume. She leaned back, with that low,
soft, aspiring murmur with which she often uttered her
response to accidents of which the brighter side was not su-

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