...of a change in character

Then she too fell silent. Perhaps it was the inevitable effect of life on the farm, or perhaps, as she sometimes said, it was because Ethan "never listened". The charge was not wholly unfounded. When she spoke it was only to complain, and to complain, and to complain of things not in his power to remedy; and to check a tendency to impatient retort he had first formed the habit of not answering her, and finally of thinking of other things while she talked. Of late, however, since he had reasons for observing her more closely, her silence had begun to trouble him. He recalled his mother's growing taciturnity, and wondered if Zeena were also turning "queer". Women did, he knew. Zeena, who had at her finger's ends the pathological chart of the whole region, had cited many cases of the kind whilst she was nursing his mother; and he himself knew of certain lonely farmhouses in the neighbourhood where stricken creatures pined, and of others where sudden tragedy had come of their presence. At times, looking at Zeena's shut face, he felt the chill of such forebodings. At other times her silence seemed deliberately assumed to conceal far-reaching intentions, mysterious conclusions drawn from suspicious resentments impossible to guess.

[Ethan Frome, Wharton, E.]

- submitted by Pearce, M. A.