She verily thought me a fright," and Ethie tried to smile as she recalled her Aunt Sophia's evident surprise at her looks.
The change troubled Ethie more than she cared to confess.

Nor did the villagers' remarks, when they came in to see her, tend to soothe her ruffled feelings.

Pale, and thin, and languid, she moved about the house and yard like a mere shadow of her former self, having, or seeming to have, no object in life, and worrying Aunt Barbara so greatly that the good woman began at last seriously to inquire what was best to do.
Suddenly, like an inspiration, there came to her a thought of Clifton, the famous water-cure in Western New York, where health, both of body and soul, had been found by so many thousands.

And Ethie caught eagerly at the proposition, accepting it on one condition--she would not go there as Mrs.Markham, where the name might be recognized.

She had been Miss Bigelow abroad, she would be Miss Bigelow again; and so Aunt Barbara yielded, mentally asking pardon for the deception to which she felt she was a party, and when, two weeks after, the clerk at Clifton water-cure looked over his list to see what rooms were engaged, and to whom, he found "Miss Adelaide Bigelow, of Massachusetts," put down for No.