Annette had been restless of late. She was not ill, and there were no symptoms of suffering in her appearance; but she had taken one of her fits of mental weariness, for which her life offered no irrational excuse, and, as her habit was, she had resorted, as a means of wearing it off, to severe bodily exercise, walking such distances as secured her against the danger of a companion, and yet never succeeding in being as tired as she wished to be.
"I should like to sleep for a week, a month, a year," she would say, "and wake up in some new world, with nothing and nobody in it I had ever seen before, and everything one thinks and says and does quite different."
But when Annette was weariest of mind, and tried to be weariest of body, she slept less, and her temper was at its worst. So Mrs. Stothard found her, when she urged her to get up and dress nicely for dinner, because Dr. Wainwright had arrived, more than usually recalcitrant.
"I shan't," said the girl, tossing her handsome arms over her head as she lay at full length upon a sofa in her dressing-room, and ruffling her dark hair with her wilful hands; "I shan't. I detest him; you know I detest him. What is he always watching me, and trying to catch my eye, for? He's a bad cruel man, and he comes here for no good. What's the matter with my aunt? She was very well on Monday."
"I don't know indeed, Miss Annette; the old complaint, I suppose."
"The old complaint! _what_ old complaint? It's all nonsense, in my belief, and he persuades her she's ill for a purpose of his own. At all events, let him see _her_ and be done with it; _I shan't_ go down to dinner."
"Oh yes, you will," said Mrs. Stothard, who had been quietly laying out Annette's dress, pouring hot water into a basin, and disposing combs and brushes on the toilet-table, "Oh yes, you will. You'll never be so foolish as to make a quarrel with your uncle and aunt about such a thing as that, and have the servants talking of it. Come, my dear, get up; you've no time to spare."
She looked steadily at the girl as she spoke, and put one hand under her shoulder, raising her from the pillow. Annette shrunk from her for a moment with a look partly cowed, partly of avoidance; the next she let her feet down to the floor, and stood up passively, but with her sullenest expression of face.