For three days Elsie did not return to the school.  Much of the time she was among the woods and rocks.  The season was now beginning to wane, and the forest to put on its autumnal glory.  The dreamy haze was beginning to soften the landscape, and the most delicious days of the year were lending their attraction to the scenery of The Mountain.  It was not very singular that Elsie should be lingering in her old haunts, from which the change of season must soon drive her.  But Old Sophy saw clearly enough that some internal conflict was going on, and knew very well that it must have its own way and work itself out as it best could.  As much as looks could tell Elsie had told her.  She had said in words, to be sure, that she could not love.  Something warped and thwarted the emotion which would have been love in another, no doubt; but that such an emotion was striving with her against all malign influences which interfered with it the old woman had a perfect certainty in her own mind.

Everybody who has observed the working of emotions in persons of various temperaments knows well enough that they have periods of incubation, which differ with the individual, and with the particular cause and degree of excitement, yet evidently go through a strictly self-limited series of evolutions, at the end of which, their result—­an act of violence, a paroxysm of tears, a gradual subsidence into repose, or whatever it may be—­declares itself, like the last stage of an attack of fever and ague.  No one can observe children without noticing that there is a personal equation, to use the astronomer’s language, in their tempers, so that one sulks an hour over an offence which makes another a fury for five minutes, and leaves him or her an angel when it is over.

At the end of three days, Elsie braided her long, glossy, black hair, and shot a golden arrow through it.  She dressed herself with more than usual care, and came down in the morning superb in her stormy beauty.  The brooding paroxysm was over, or at least her passion had changed its phase.  Her father saw it with great relief; he had always many fears for her in her hours and days of gloom, but, for reasons before assigned, had felt that she must be trusted to herself, without appealing to actual restraint, or any other supervision than such as Old Sophy could exercise without offence.

She went off at the accustomed hour to the school.  All the girls had their eyes on her.  None so keen as these young misses to know an inward movement by an outward sign of adornment:  if they have not as many signals as the ships that sail the great seas, there is not an end of ribbon or a turn of a ringlet which is not a hieroglyphic with a hidden meaning to these little cruisers over the ocean of sentiment.