CORINNA OBSERVES Yes, Patty was in love, this Corinna decided after a single glance.

The girl appeared to have changed miraculously over-night, for her hard brightness had melted in the warmth of some glowing flame that burned at her heart.

Never had she looked so Ariel-like and elusive; never had she brought so hauntingly to Corinna's memory the loveliness of youth and spring that is vivid and fleeting.
"Can it be that Stephen is really in earnest ?" asked the older woman of her disturbed heart; and the next instant, shaking her wise head, she added, "Poor little redbird! What does she know of life outside of a cedar tree ?" At luncheon the Governor, in an effort to hide some perfectly evident anxiety, over-shot the mark as usual, Corinna reflected.

It was his way, she had observed, to cover a mental disturbance with pretended hilarity.
There was, as always when he was unnatural and ill at ease, a touch of coarseness in his humour, a grotesque exaggeration of his rhetorical style.

With his mind obviously distracted he told several anecdotes of dubious wit; and while he related them Miss Spencer sat primly silent with her gaze on her plate.