Ideala had kept up very well while she was among us, but soon after she
went away we gathered from the tone of her letters that there was a
change in her which alarmed us. Her health, which had hitherto been
splendid, seemed to be giving way, and it was evident that her new
position did not please her, and that, even after she had been there
for months, she continued to feel herself "a stranger in a strange
land." The people were uncongenial, and I think it likely they regarded
Ideala's oddities with some suspicion, and did not take to her as we
had done. She had not that extreme youth which had been her excuse when
she came to us, and which, somehow, we had not missed when she lost it;
and her habitual reserve on all matters that immediately concerned
herself must also have tended to make her unpopular with people whose
predominant quality was "an eminent curiosity."
"They are far above books," Ideala wrote to Claudia; "what they study
is each other, and in the pursuit of this branch of knowledge they are
indefatigable. When they can get nothing out of me about myself, they
question me about my husband and friends, and it is in vain that I
answer them with those words of wisdom (I feel sure I misquote them)--
'All that is mine own is yours till the end of my life; but the secret
of my friend is not mine own'--they persevere.
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