Janet lay still, as she had promised; but the tea, which had warmed her
and given her a sense of greater bodily ease, had only heightened the
previous excitement of her brain. Her ideas had a new vividness, which
made her feel as if she had only seen life through a dim haze before; her
thoughts, instead of springing from the action of her own mind, were
external existences, that thrust themselves imperiously upon her like
haunting visions. The future took shape after shape of misery before her,
always ending in her being dragged back again to her old life of terror,
and stupor, and fevered despair. Her husband had so long overshadowed her
life that her imagination could not keep hold of a condition in which
that great dread was absent; and even his absence--what was it? only a
d
