She was unhappy with her stepmother in a negative way, but so impervious had she become to casual annoyances, that she hardly weighed the disadvantages of her home against the probable relinquishment of Mrs.Mullen's washing day after her marriage to Abel.
Her soul was crushed like a trapped creature in the iron grip of a hopeless passion, and her insensibility to the lesser troubles of life was but the insensibility of such a creature to the stings of the insects swarming around its head.

The outcome of her drive with Abel aroused only a dull curiosity in her mind.

Some years ago, in the days before Mr.Mullen, she would probably have fallen a helpless victim to the miller had his eyes wandered for an instant in her direction.

But those days and that probability were now over forever.
Unfortunately, however, it is not given to a man to look into the soul of a woman except through the inscrutable veil of his own personality.
Had Abel pierced that purple calico dress and witnessed the pathetic struggle in Judy's bosom, his next words would hardly have been uttered.
"I wish I could do something to make you happier, Judy." She looked at him with mysterious, brooding eyes, and he was conscious again of the attraction, as subtile and as penetrating as a perfume, which she exhaled in the stillness, and which vanished as soon as she broke the quivering intensity of the silence.

That this attraction was merely the unconscious vibration of her passion for another man, which shed its essence in solitude as naturally as a flower sheds its scent, did not occur to him.