Her mistress sometimes observed her in tears, but they were signs of secret sorrow, which she concealed as often as she saw them attract notice.

Time wore on, her cheek grew pale, and her step heavy.

The cause of these changes could not have escaped the matronly eye of Mrs.Saddletree, but she was chiefly confined by indisposition to her bedroom for a considerable time during the latter part of Effie's service.

This interval was marked by symptoms of anguish almost amounting to despair.

The utmost efforts of the poor girl to command her fits of hysterical agony were, often totally unavailing, and the mistakes which she made in the shop the while, were so numerous and so provoking that Bartoline Saddletree, who, during his wife's illness, was obliged to take closer charge of the business than consisted with his study of the weightier matters of the law, lost all patience with the girl, who, in his law Latin, and without much respect to gender, he declared ought to be cognosced by inquest of a jury, as _fatuus, furiosus,_ and _naturaliter idiota._ Neighbours, also, and fellow-servants, remarked with malicious curiosity or degrading pity, the disfigured shape, loose dress, and pale cheeks, of the once beautiful and still interesting girl.