an?" she asked herself. She examined the
sewing carefully; the stitches were small, and even, and firm, of black
silk.

She looked around the room. On the stand beside the bed was something
which she had not noticed before: a little old-fashioned work-box with
a picture of a little boy in a pinafore on the top. Beside this
work-box lay, as if just laid down by the user, a spool of black silk,
a pair of scissors, and a large steel thimble with a hole in the top,
after an old style. Louisa stared at these, then at the sleeves of her
dress. She moved toward the door. For a moment she thought that this
was something legitimate about which she might demand information; then
she became doubtful. Suppose that work-box had been there all the
time; suppose she had forgotten; suppose she herself had done this
absurd thing, or suppose that she had not, what was to hinder the
others from thinking so; what was to hinder a doubt being cast upon her
own memory and reasoning powers?

Louisa Stark had been on the verge of a nervous breakdown in spite of
her iron constitution and her great will power. No woman can teach
school for forty years with absolute impunity. She was more credulous
as to her own possible failings than she had ever been in her whole
life. She was cold with horror and terror, and yet not so much horror
and terror of the supernatural as of her own self. The weakness of
belief in the supernatural was nearly impossible for this strong
nature. She could more easily believe in her own failing powers.

"I don't know but I'm going to be like Aunt Marcia," she said to
herself, and her fat face took on a long rigidity of fear.

She started toward the mirror to unfasten her dress, then she
remembered the strange circumstance of the brooch and stopped short.
Then she straightened herself defiantly and marched up to the bureau
and looked in the glass. She saw reflected therein, fastening the lace
at her throat, the old-fashioned thing of a large oval, a knot of fair
and black hair under glass, set in a rim of twisted gold. She
unfastened it with trembling fingers and looked at it. It was her own
brooch, the cluster of pearl grapes on black onyx. Louisa Stark placed
the trinket in its little box on the nest of pink cotton and put it
away in the bureau drawer. Only death could disturb her habit of order.

Her fingers were so cold they felt fairly numb as she unfastened her
dress; she staggered when she slipped