People in Edgham aped city society, they even talked about the “four hundred.”  The newly wedded pair were frequent guests of honor at dinners and receptions, and Ida herself was a member of the Edgham’s Woman’s Club, and that took her out a good deal.  Maria was rather lonely.  Finally the added state and luxury of her life, which had at first pleased her, failed to do so.  She felt that she hated all the new order of things, and her heart yearned for the old.  She began to grow thin; she did not sleep much nor sleep well.  She felt tired all the time.  One day her father noticed her changed looks.

“Why, Maria is getting thin!” said he.

“I think it is because she is growing tall,” said Ida.  “Everybody seems thin when they are growing tall.  I did myself.  I was much thinner than Maria at her age.”  She looked at Maria with her invariable smile as she spoke.

“She looks very thin to me,” Harry said, anxiously.

He himself looked thin and older.  An anxious wrinkle had deepened between his eyes.  It was June, and the days were getting warm.  He was anxious about Ida’s health also.  Ida was not at all anxious.  She was perfectly placid.  It did not seem to her that an overruling Providence could possibly treat her unkindly.  She was rather annoyed at times, but still never anxious, and utterly satisfied with herself to that extent that it precluded any doubt as to the final outcome of everything.

Maria continued to lose flesh.  A sentimental interest in herself and her delicacy possessed her.  She used to look at her face, which seemed to her more charming than ever, although so thin, in the glass, and reflect, with a pleasant acquiescence, on an early death.  She even spent some time in composing her own epitaph, and kept it carefully hidden away in a drawer of her dresser, under some linen.

Maria felt a gloomy pride when the doctor, who came frequently to see Ida, was asked to look at her; she felt still more triumphant when he expressed it as his opinion that she ought to have a change of air the moment school closed.  The doctor said Maria was running down, which seemed to her a very interesting state of things, and one which ought to impress people.  She told Gladys Mann the next day at school.

“The doctor says I’m running down,” said she.

“You do look awful bad,” replied Gladys.

After recess Maria saw Gladys with her face down on her desk, weeping.  She knew that she was weeping because she looked so badly and was running down.  She glanced across at Wollaston Lee, and wondered if he had noticed how badly she looked, and yet how charming.  All at once the boy shot a glance at her in return; then he blushed and scowled and took up his book.  It all comforted Maria in the midst of her langour and her illness, which was negative and unattended by any pain.  If she felt any appetite she restrained it, she became so vain of having lost it.