THE SICKNESS.

The epiphany.

In spite of her own self interest, it was Lucille that was continuously haunted by the pride filled words she had thrown at the girl that afternoon in the garden. When she'd tried to fall asleep at night, the words had buzzed like irritated hornets inside her skull and made her chest feel tight and painful. She wanted to convince herself that there was nothing wrong with what she had said. It certainly wasn't any goodness on her part that sharpened her spiteful words and wielded them to carve lines over and over again in her heart till she felt like the blood from the wounds would fill her chest cavity. Soon enough it became clear that watching  how the girl had reacted to the words is what was causing Lucille such distress. There had been no anger, no sadness, no embarrassment, no shock, not even that barely concealed disgust that Lucille had come to expect whenever she looked into the girls eyes. Rather, the girl seemed content. No, not content but rather relieved. As though something complicated she had been waiting to figure out had suddenly made itself abundantly clear to her.

The days that followed the not-really-altercation were strangely the most amiable that Lucille and the girl had shared since her mother had introduced them to each other. The girl went about her daily tasks caring for Lucille in a relaxed and controlled manner. She spoke as politely as ever and did whatever Lucille asked of her without complaint. 
Lucille however could not help but be tormented by the creeping sensation of having been laid bare. She felt as though something incredibly private about herself had been dragged into the light for others to see without her permission. Anxiety made her rub her skin raw with the blunt edges of her finger nails making ugly red patches that she took great care to hide with gloves and extravagant sleeves. Beneath the anxiety was a growing anger that simmered constantly and reminded her of a distant storm brewing on the horizon of a summer day. There was no way she could come out and voice these feelings to anyone who could help her make sense of her situation. The girl was a servant and being the cause of her strange ailment would either be scornful of Lucille's inexplicable concerns or worse, she'd pity her. Her mother was never an option and anyone else in the house would undoubtedly tell her mother.

One night a few weeks after the incident, while Lucille was alone in her rooms, the name of the emotion tormenting her came to into her consciousness like one who had been waiting at the door for admission into a house. As she sat quietly at her dressing table in near perfect darkness, she studied the blackened shapes that would have been her reflection in the daytime when the sun attempted to lend the rooms some life. She raised one hand to feel the cool smooth surface of the mirror and felt something shift like a switch within her mind .
"Fear? Is that what you are?" Her voice sounded awful in the silence. Like a stone had broken the perfect peace of a pond and sunk to the bottom. Fear is what she was feeling. She was afraid that her mask had slipped. Her carefully constructed facade of perfect bliss had shifted ever so slightly to reveal the many awful snake-like emotions that writhed in battle with each other at the center of her being. The perverse  things she only addressed in the deepest quiet of night and only to the other Lucille that sometimes conversed with her in the recesses of her mind. She was afraid because no matter how true to character her words had been that day, they were unmistakeably honest. She had acted on an honest emotion and the girl had seen it clear as day. She had allowed another living soul to see the true Lucille within,  however subtle the expose had been. She had the sudden urge to shatter the mirror. To see the shards of the  perfect silver surface catch on the moonlight that came in through the window and cast invisible rays of color across the wooden floors. She raised her fist to strike the mirror at its center and just as silently as she had lifted her hand, she lowered it back down to the table. The familiar scent of vanilla and rosemary that pervaded her dressing table briefly calmed her racing heart. The oil it came from had been a gift from the older Mrs. D'avencourt. Her grandmother who had been her father's mother. No one so good and so loving as that great lady could have given birth to Lucille's mother.

"Did you have trouble sleeping mistress?" Nilou asked as her fingers swiftly rearranged the various cosmetics that Lucille had moved in her hands all night until the sun had turned the darkness grey and she'd slipped back beneath her covers,  waiting to be woken by her servant in the morning. As was expected of a princess of the capitol. Princesses did not stay up at night contemplating their own evil after all.
The girl studied Lucille like the stable boys watched the horses on race days.   She was waiting to see what kind of mood Lucille was in and how that would in turn decide what kind of day she would have.
"No. I slept last night as I slept the night before it."
That was all she was willing to say. Suddenly, Lucille wanted the girl as far away from herself as possible. Why had she been honest with this slave girl from the farms? Why did she want to know why the girl had seemed almost relieved to see it?
Lucille did not enjoy anxiety as much as she reveled in her other negative emotions. It was alot more troublesome than most of its sisters. She lifted her aching body from the bed and without looking at the girl made her way to the tub.
"Come, you must give me my bath."