She had seasons of fierce and hopeless debating with herself, on the most trivial matters, or what would seem so to nine hundred and ninety-nine persons out of a thousand.

During such seasons as these, her treatment of her friends and acquaintances had odd alternations of frank friendliness and reticent coolness.

A sudden misgiving whether she might not be appearing to like her friend more than she really did would seize her at most inopportune moments, and make her absent-minded and irresponsive.

She would leave sentences abruptly unfinished,--invitations, perhaps, or the acceptances of invitations, the mere words of which spring readily to one's lips, and are thoughtlessly spoken.

But, in Mercy's times of conflict with herself, even these were exaggerated in her view to monstrous deceits.