But far from claiming the privileges which he might apparently have enjoyed, it seemed to him presumption enough and happiness enough to kiss her dress, her sleeve, a tress of her hair, or, at most, her hand, and to dream of her lips.
The dazed appearance, as of one doubtful of herself and all about her, which Ida had worn the night when she was brought home, had now wholly passed away.

But a certain pensiveness remained.

Her smiles were the smiles of affection not of gaiety, and there was always a shadow in her eyes.

It was as if the recollection of the mystery from which her life had emerged were never absent from her mind.
Still she took so much pleasure in her daily drives with Miss Ludington that the latter ordered a pony chaise for her special use, and when Paul arranged a croquet set on the village green, she permitted him to teach her the game, and even showed some interest in it.
When the first dresses which had been ordered for her came home, she was delighted as any girl must have been, for they were the richest and most beautiful fabrics that money could buy; but Miss Ludington seemed, of the two, far the more pleased.
For herself she had cared nothing for dress.

In forty years she had not given a thought to personal adornment, but Ida's toilet became her most absorbing preoccupation.