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for dark forest depths, or a drear, night-enshadowed heath. But she became
gay. She could not keep in the medium, nor be, as was usual with her,
placidly content. Every one remarked her exhilaration of spirits; as all
actions appear graceful in the eye of rank, her guests surrounded her
applaudingly, although there was a sharpness in her laugh, and an
abruptness in her sallies, which might have betrayed her secret to an
attentive observer. She went on, feeling that, if she had paused for a
moment, the checked waters of misery would have deluged her soul, that her
wrecked hopes would raise their wailing voices, and that those who now
echoed her mirth, and provoked her repartees, would have shrunk in fear
from her convulsive despair. Her only consolation during the violence which
she did herself, was to watch the motions of an illuminated clock, and
internally count the moments which must elapse before she could be alone.
At length the rooms began to thin. Mocking her own desires, she rallied her
guests on their early departure. One by one they left her--at length she
pressed the hand of her last visitor. "How cold and damp your hand is,"
said her friend; "you are over fatigued, pray hasten to rest." Perdita
smiled faintly--her guest left her; the carriage rolling down the street
assured the final departure. Then, as if pursued by an enemy, as if wings
had been at her feet, she flew to her own apartment, she dismissed her
attendants, she locked the doors, she threw herself wildly on the floor,
she bit her lips even to blood to suppress her shrieks, and lay long a prey
to the vulture of despair, striving not to think, while multitudinous ideas
made a home of her heart; and ideas, horrid as furies, cruel as vipers, and
poured in with such swift succession, that they seemed to jostle and wound
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