She combed her grayish-blond hair in smooth ridges back from her
broad forehead. She pinned her lace at her throat with a brooch,
very handsome, although somewhat obsolete--a bunch of pearl grapes
on black onyx, set in gold filagree. She had purchased it several
years ago with a considerable portion of the stipend from her
spring term of school-teaching.
As she surveyed herself in the little swing mirror surmounting the
old-fashioned mahogany bureau she suddenly bent forward and looked
closely at the brooch. It seemed to her that something was wrong
with it. As she looked she became sure. Instead of the familiar
bunch of pearl grapes on the black onyx, she saw a knot of blonde
and black hair under glass surrounded by a border of twisted gold.
She felt a thrill of horror, though she could not tell why. She
unpinned the brooch, and it was her own familiar one, the pearl
grapes and the onyx. "How very foolish I am," she thought. She
thrust the pin in the laces at her throat and again looked at
herself in the glass, and there it was again--the knot of blond and
black hair and the twisted gold.
Louisa Stark looked at her own large, firm face above the brooch
and it was full of terror and dismay which were new to it.
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