The House of The Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne Chapter 14 Page 1

Phoebe’s Good-By

HOLGRAVE, plunging into his tale with the energy and absorption natural to a young author, had given a good deal of action to the parts capable of being developed and exemplified in that manner.

He now observed that a certain remarkable drowsiness (wholly unlike that with which the reader possibly feels himself affected) had been flung over the senses of his auditress. It was the effect, unquestionably, of the mystic gesticulations by which he had sought to bring bodily before Phoebe’s perception the figure of the mesmerizing carpenter. With the lids drooping over her eyes, — now lifted for an instant, and drawn down again as with leaden weights, — she leaned slightly towards him, and seemed almost to regulate her breath by his.