"
Amanda went to her task in the southwest chamber while her sister
stepped heavily down the back stairs on her way to the kitchen.
"It seems to me you had better open the bed while you air and dust,
then make it up again," she called back.
"Yes, sister," Amanda answered, shudderingly.
Nobody knew how this elderly woman with the untrammeled imagination
of a child dreaded to enter the southwest chamber, and yet she
could not have told why she had the dread. She had entered and
occupied rooms which had been once tenanted by persons now dead.
The room which had been hers in the little house in which she and
her sister had lived before coming here had been her dead mother's.
She had never reflected upon the fact with anything but loving awe
and reverence. There had never been any fear. But this was
different. She entered and her heart beat thickly in her ears.
Her hands were cold. The room was a very large one. The four
windows, two facing south, two west, were closed, the blinds also.
The room was in a film of green gloom. The furniture loomed out
vaguely. The gilt frame of a blurred old engraving on the wall
caught a little light.
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