We confirm that the recently discovered field-dependent nuclear quadrupolar splitting of Xe-131 [T. Meersmann and M. Haake, Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 1211 (1998)] arises from a distortion of the electron density due to the applied magnetic field. This distortion depends both linearly and quadratically on the applied field. The existence of the former is due to the coupling to the field and the nuclear spin. The latter is a manifestation of the quadratic Zeeman effect. In addition to confirming the order of magnitude for the observed effect, we show that there should be an asymmetry introduced in the spectra due to the linear coupling with the nuclear spin. This effect has not been seen experimentally.