To be a mystery is overpoweringly sweet to any girl and Bessy Bell was being that.

Her sudden desire for solitude had worried her mother, and her distant superiority had incited the vexation of her friends.

When they exerted themselves to win Bessy back to her old self she looked dreamily beyond them and became more aloof.

Doctor Bronson, in reply to Mrs.Bell's appeal to him, looked the young woman over, asked her a few questions, marveled at the imperious artifice with which she evaded him, and throwing up his hands said Bessy was beyond him.
The dark fever, rising from the school yards and the playgrounds and the streets, subtly poisoning the blood of Bessy Bell, slowly lost its heat and power for the time being.

Bessy lived in the full secret expression of her girlish adoration.