As the agitation of her feelings subsided, and her frame
recovered from the shock which it had received, she became more placid
and coherent. Eugene kept almost continually near her. He formed the
real object round which her scattered ideas once more gathered, and
which linked them once more with the realities of life. But her
changeful disorder now appeared to take a new turn. She became languid
and inert, and would sit for hours silent, and almost in a state of
lethargy. If roused from this stupor, it seemed as if her mind would
make some attempts to follow up a train of thought, but would soon
become confused. She would regard every one that approached her with
an anxious and inquiring eye, that seemed continually to disappoint
itself. Sometimes, as her lover sat holding her hand, she would look
pensively in his face without saying a word, until his heart was
overcome; and after these transient fits of intellectual exertion, she
would sink again into lethargy.
By degrees, this stupor increased; her mind appeared to have subsided
into a stagnant and almost death-like calm. For the greater part of
the time, her eyes were closed; her face almost as fixed and
passionless as that of a corpse.
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