Jeffrey had often
spoken, but which, jerked off with the cover, had been left where
they fell; while immediately in front of the fireplace lay one of
the rugs tossed into a heap, as if she had rolled in it on the floor
or used it to smother her cries of pain or anger.
So much for the state in which the witness found the boudoir. The
adjoining bed-room was not in much better case, though it was evident
that the bed itself had not been lain in since it was made up the
day before at breakfast time. By this token Mrs. Jeffrey had not
slept the night before, or if she had laid her head anywhere it had
been on the rug already spoken of.
These signs of extreme mental suffering, so much more extreme than
any Loretta had ever before witnessed, frightened her so that the
tray shook in her hand as she set it down on the table among the
countless objects Mrs. Jeffrey always had about her. The noise
seemed to startle her mistress, who had walked to the window after
opening the door, for she wheeled impetuously about and Loretta saw
her face. It was as if a blight had passed over it. Once gay and
animated beyond the power of any one to describe, it had become in
twenty-four hours a ghost's face, with the glare of some awful
resolve on it. Or so it would appear from the way Loretta described
it.
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