Miss Quincey did not mind much; she had been so unhappy.

And then it gave an alarming double-knock at her ribs, and Miss Quincey came to life again as unhappy as ever.
And of what it all meant Miss Quincey had no more idea than the man in the moon, though even the Mad Hatter could have told her.

Her heart went through the same performance a second and a third night, and Miss Quincey said to herself that if it happened again she would have to send for Dr.
Cautley.

Nothing would have induced her to see him for a mere trifle, but pride was one thing and prudence was another.
It did happen again, and she sent.
She may have hoped that he would discover something wrong, being dimly conscious that her chance lay there, that suffering constituted the incontestable claim on his sympathy; most distinctly she felt the desire (monstrous of course in a woman of no account) to wear the aureole of pain for its own sake; to walk for a little while in the glory and glamour of death.

She did not want or mean to give any trouble, to be a source of expense; she had saved a little money for the supreme luxury.
But she had hardly entertained the idea for a moment when she dismissed it as selfish.